


Too Wise

by willowcrowned



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Ed-typical Swearing, Edward Elric is incredibly gorgeous and he takes advantage of it, I wrote this in eight days and edited it in two, Judgy Edward Elric, M/M, No beta we die like mne, Sarcasm, Snarky dialogue, Xiao Mei tries to bite a guy's arm off and Roy secretly hopes she succeeds, absolutely no Riza bashing whatsoever, brief angst, forgot to add that lmao, im so tired, no Winry bashing either but she doesn't show up, rated explicit because of the last scene which is entirely skippable, she is awesome and I love her with all my heart, the internet may crucify me otherwise, these tags are all over the place, they're all adults!!, uhhhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:35:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 45,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24974692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowcrowned/pseuds/willowcrowned
Summary: Roy Mustang has a lot of problems. Even ignoring the alphabetized list of all the ways Amestris is fucked up (which he has, by the way. It's stashed in his nightstand where he can add to it in the middle of the night) he's still got at least fifteen or sixteen different things to be sad about. Chief among which is that Hawkeye is forcing him to take the week off, and he'sbored. His only savior? The fact that Edward Elric has just broken into his house and is asking him for backup on a mission. Edward is many things— too smart for his own good, occasionally patronizing, and just marginally less annoying as an adult than he was as a teenager— but at least he's notboring. Whatever he's got planned, it's got to beat Roy's plan of lying on his floor for the rest of the week, drunk and miserable. Besides, he can handle Edward, right?
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang
Comments: 36
Kudos: 263
Collections: Stuff I love so much I even created a collection so I can read it again at some point





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Edit 29/10/20: I wrote and posted this several months ago without thought for editing. I realized approximately a week after posting that this was desperately in need of it. Unfortunately, I had no desire to go back to it then and I don't now. Even though most of my brain is screaming at me to take this down, I've decided to keep it up because some people have apparently really enjoyed it. That said, **I _do not_ consider this up to my usual standards**.
> 
> Title from the line "Thou and I art too wise to woo peaceably" from _Much Ado About Nothing_.
> 
> Disclaimer: I am not a chemist, nor a biologist, and I spent all of four hours googling things for this. If something sounds wrong, that's probably because it is.
> 
> This is woefully underedited, which probably means that it will be delightfully contrived. It's also unbeta'd, as my beta reader/editor was unavailable (read: spending the week alone with her girlfriend). All mistakes are mine and mine alone.

Roy isn’t rdunk. Drukn. Drumk. Whatever the word is, he isn’t it. Sure, there’s an empty bottle of whiskey on the floor next to him, but that shouldn’t count against his case. Anyone could have drank that without him noticing. After all, he’s been too drunk to move for hours, so how would he know if someone had? 

Roy closes his eyes, letting the pounding of his heart and the rush of blood in his head overwhelm his senses. All is quiet—annoyingly quiet, like it has been for the last three days. He would almost welcome some new political enemy rising to power, or a sudden border skirmish, or an assassination. Anything to give Riza a reason to let him go back to work. Somewhere in his consciousness, around the part that still has a little control over his limbs, he hears a screech and a thump and then another screech. Maybe it is assassins, he hopes. If it’s assassins, then Riza might let him go back to work so he doesn’t have to stay at home without any protection. And as a bonus, he can prove to the world once and for all that he is _not_ drunk. 

“Oi.” It’s an annoying voice. One he knows belongs to someone he knows. Probably someone that’s going to accuse him of being drunk. 

“fuckoff,” he says, or at least he says something close enough to that that he hopes it’s intelligible. (He remembers the word inetelligibile, which clearly means he’s not drunk.) He doesn’t bother to open his eyes. He doesn’t need a lecture, no matter who it is. 

The voice pokes him in the face. 

“Heyyyy,” he slurs, opening his eyes. “That was rude.” 

Inches away from his face are a pair of honey-gold eyes that are squinting at him like he’s a very interesting piece of gum on a shoe. He knows who those eyes belong to. Edward fucking Elric. 

“Whatthe. fuck?” Roy manages. “How’d did you get in?” 

Edward points to the window with his thumb and Roy tries to follow the movement with his eyes. 

“Don’t dothat,” Roy says. 

“Do what?” 

Roy raises a hand in the air and makes it flop around in what is a perfectly clear explanation. “That.” 

Edward raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t know that you were this useless as a drunk.” 

“’M not durnk. drumk. dmurnk.” Roy puts on his most commanding and threatening expression. “Fuck off.” 

Edward snorts. “No way I’m going to do that. Fifteen-year-old me would have killed to see this. I just wish I had a camera...” His voice trails off as his gaze sweeps the room in a vain hope that a camera lies just out of sight. He frowns, seeing no camera, looks at the empty bottle, and looks back at Roy. “Besides, I don’t think you can handle that much whiskey.” 

“Welll what would _you_ know,” Roy asks with the confidence of someone who knows they’ve won. “Short people can’t drimk— dirnk— drinkk as much.” 

Edward stares at him with amusement. “I’m about three centimeters taller than you, asshole.” He shakes his head, a not-entirely-malicious smile on his face. “I’m getting you into bed.” 

“Hahh,” Roy says, “Nicetry but I’m prettyI’m glued to the floor.” 

“Sure ya are.” 

Edward Elric must be some sort of god because he picks Roy up with no problem and carries him into the hallway. Roy hears several doors open and close and a few uncomplimentary muttered comments about his interior decorating skills, but eventually Edward must find the right door, because he feels himself being tossed slightly-less-unceremoniously-than-he-expected-to-be onto the bed. 

“I’m not helping you undress,” Edward says. “I have my limits. Sleep in your clothes.” He’s gone for a second before he’s back with a glass of water. “Drink this.” 

Roy does what he says as Edward watches. At some point, he thinks he attempts to make a witty reply, but his brain and his mouth are for some reason disconnected. He tries to say this, then realizes he can’t. By this time, his brain has already decided it’s time to sleep. He doesn’t argue. 

There are two possibilities for where Roy Mustang is right now. 

The first and most logical: Hell. 

Screw whatever Truth is and the purgatory thing that the Ishvalans have going on, the Aerugoneans were right about the afterlife. Roy Mustang is in hell. There’s no way he could be in this much pain otherwise. 

The second much less likely possibility is that Roy has a hangover. A very bad hangover, that has given him an ear-splitting headache, a horrible backache, and nausea on a level that shouldn’t be humanly possibly. 

All possibilities of the second one being correct are quickly erased by the sound of a very loud and very annoying laugh. It’s the laugh of a demon mocking his pain; it has to be. 

“You’re hungover, idiot,” says the owner of the laugh, who has an equally loud, annoying, and ear-splitting voice. 

“How did you read my mind?” Roy croaks. “Also, please shut up.” 

“You said it out loud.” The voice laughs again before quieting, “There’s painkillers and a glass of water on the nightstand.” 

Roy groans in response, opening his eyes just enough to avoid knocking over the water as he grasps for the painkillers. Even opening his eyes a sliver is enough to let in the evil, evil sun. He winces. The world hates him today. He swallows the painkillers, praying that he’ll be able to keep them down, before lying back down. 

“Why the hell are you here, Fullmetal?” 

He can’t see him but he’s 100% sure that Edward is smirking. He can feel it, like a sixth sense developed from having to clean up his messes for three straight years. 

“I slept on your couch,” Edward says, deliberately not answering Roy’s real question. “Also, use my fucking name. I haven’t been Fullmetal in years.” 

Roy attempts to shoot Edward a cold and disapproving glare but winces as soon as he opens his eyes. “Close the blinds.” 

He hears the telltale scraping of metal against metal that feels one thousand times worse than it usually does and he opens his eyes a moment later. Investing in those blackout curtains had been worth it. His eyes don’t hurt when he looks around, and as a bonus, there isn’t enough light for Edward to see his face. The asshole has the uncanny talent for figuring out someone is miserable and then pestering them until he learns what it is. (He also, Roy tries not to remind himself because he’s really enjoying hating Edward at that moment, then tries to fix the problem. But whatever.) 

He glares at Edward. “Why are you here?” 

Edward stares back for a second, and Roy can practically hear the gears turning. Then he groans at the way the sound clangs around in his head and remembers that metaphorical gears do not make actual noise and that it’s probably just the shutters on his neighbor’s house creaking. 

Edward seems to come to a decision. “I need backup. I’m investigating a town with a shit ton of suspicious alchemists and I want to make sure I have someone that can back me up.” 

Roy looks at him for a long minute, then casts away his gaze in shame. “Hawkeye,” he says flatly. It’s not a question. 

Edward raises an eyebrow. “Al told me to come here, actually.” 

Roy doesn’t bother responding to that. Even if Al was the messenger, the source was Riza. 

“So,” Edward says, sitting down at the foot of Roy’s bed, “what’s your damage? I would have thought that a full-fledged General wouldn’t have time for field missions, but Al tells me to come get you for one and I find you half-passed out on your floor from whiskey. It’s weird.” 

“My damage is a hangover.” Roy knows his voice is cold. Good. Maybe it’ll get the kid to fuck off. 

Edward gives him an unimpressed look before shrugging. “Alright, I won’t pry.” He’s halfway out the door before he turns around. “I’ll make breakfast for you when you feel up to it, since you’re such a sad excuse for a person right now.” 

Roy doesn’t dignify that with any response but “Close the fucking door.” 

It was afternoon when he wakes up again, judging by the light that’s getting in through the cracks in the curtains. Roy sighs, the bad taste in his mouth forcing him to get moving, and blinks his eyes open. As he sits up, he feels his back ache and repressed a groan. That’s what he gets for spending hours on the floor. Small miracles, though, because his headache is down to a manageable level and he actually feels hungry. Perks of an alcohol tolerance developed through years of practice and a relation to his aunt, a woman who can outdrink anyone in Central (and has done so on many occasions). 

He looks down at himself and frowns. His shirt is half unbuttoned, stained with some of the whiskey from the night before, and he’s still in his dress pants. Someone— Edward, assuming no other delinquents had broken into his apartment the night before— had pulled a blanket over him while letting him sleep on the comforter, as well as placing the small metal trashcan from the bathroom next to the nightstand. He snorts, Edward clearly has some experience in the hangover department. 

He manages to pull himself out of bed and goes to brush his teeth before anything else. The light in the en-suite only makes how terrible he looks clear. His hair is sticking up at all angles, his face is deathly pale, and his eyes look dead. At least the dark circles under his eyes haven’t gotten any worse. 

As he gets his toothbrush, he notices that he stinks of sweat and whiskey. At this, his stomach turns, and he is immediately reminded of the bottle he had drunk. He doesn’t throw up, but it’s a close-run thing, and he knows he’s not going to be able to drink that whiskey again for years. 

The shower’s hot water is sweet on his skin, the soap even nicer. Best of all, brushing his teeth three times has managed to take his mouth from three-day-old trout to minty fresh. He stays in the shower a very long time, so long that his fingers are pruny when he gets out, but on the upside, he feels human again. 

He considers putting on actual clothes for all of half a second before realizing that Edward is going to make fun of him no matter what he wears. With that in mind, he slips on the pair of pajama pants he sleeps in and finds a stretchy old t-shirt to spare Edward’s eyes from his chest and his own ears from Edward’s protests. 

He hisses briefly at the light when he opens the door, but his eyes adjust quickly and he wanders out into the hall with no further problems. When no mocking comment from Edward appears— either at the state of his dress, or the way his hair goes frizzy after a hot shower, or at his general state of being from about 4pm yesterday to half an hour ago— he thinks that Edward might have just gone home. But he turns the corner into his living room and sees Edward sprawled out on the couch, hair down, chewing on a pen as he looks at official reports. 

For some reason, Roy had expected the fifteen-year-old Fullmetal to be lying on his couch, snoring loudly while wrapped in his red coat. Instead there’s a man with Edward’s exact same coloring, but a face that’s older. He’s lost his pinched and hungry look; his face now is made up of sharp, delicate lines. He looks like his mother, Roy realizes. He’d seen a picture of her once or twice. She was delicate and beautiful and Edward looks so much like her that it’s almost disturbing. Though, Roy considers, Edward, at least, probably prefers it to looking like his father. 

It’s a strange thing, looking at a grown up Edward Elric, all the more strange for the realization that he hasn’t seen Edward for more than a day or two at a time since before the Promised Day. For the past seven years he’s been imagining that Edward Elric was still the Fullmetal Alchemist— a loud kid with a short temper and freakishly prodigal skill in both alchemy and pissing people off. The Edward on his couch almost looks like an adult. 

_Not ‘almost,’_ Roy thinks. _He is an adult._ He grins wryly. No wonder his back hurts. If Fullmetal is finally grown up, then he must be getting old. 

(‘You’re not old, sir,’ the Riza in his head tells him. ‘You’re just being dramatic.’) 

He knows she’s right, but her voice in his head just makes him feel worse. 

“Oh, hey,” Edward says, seeing Roy from the corner of his eye. “You’re finally up. Do you want food? I raided your fridge and there’s almost nothing in it so I went and got you some stuff to make breakfast with.” 

“Oh,” Roy hadn’t expected that. 

“Don’t worry though,” Edward is smiling in the way he always has when he’s done something that will annoy someone and is proud of it. “I stole some money from your coat to pay for it.” 

Roy snorts. He kind of expected that. “So long as you don’t burn down my house.” 

“Shouldn’t we be more worried about _you_ committing arson?” 

“I’m not stupid enough to believe that you wouldn’t be able to set anything on fire if you wanted to.” Roy folds his arms in front of his chest and leans against the wall. It’s not like he’s Edward’s CO anymore. He doesn’t need to act formal. Not that he ever bothered trying to avoid his and Edward’s verbal battles then, either. 

Edward smirks, and clearly _that_ hasn’t changed in the seven years, because he still does it an obnoxious amount. 

“That wasn’t a compliment,” Roy says before Edward can get any ideas. 

“Fine, fine,” Edward says, holding up his hands in mock-surrender. “I’ll pretend that setting things on fire with no alchemy and no fire-starters isn’t an incredible skill. Anyways,” he says. “You hungry?” 

Roy looks at him, bemused. “I can make my own food, Full— Edward.” 

Edward shrugs. “You couldn’t three hours ago, and I offered anyways.” 

“Is your food even edible?” Roy knows he looks skeptical, but that’s because he is. 

“Hey! Winry taught me!” 

He’s missed this, Roy realizes. Not necessarily Edward, who, up until five minutes ago, (at least in Roy’s mind) was a snarky kid, but he’s missed being able to tease someone. 

Edward is looking at him strangely. 

“What?” 

Edward doesn’t respond, just keeps giving him that same strange look, like Roy is a malfunctioning jack-in-the-box that hit some kid in the head. 

Roy frowns. “You can make me food now.” 

Edward grins, lighthearted again. “Yes, sir.” 

“Don’t call me sir!” Roy calls after him. 

“Aw,” Edward says, “and here I thought you’d be glad that I’ve finally started respecting your rank.” 

Yeah, Roy definitely hasn’t missed Edward. 

“So,” he says after he’s finished shoveling Edward’s surprisingly good omelet into his mouth at what he would like to claim is a reasonable pace but is probably something closer to the speed of light. “What’s the mission?” 

Edward gives him a weird look. 

“What?” Roy says. 

Edward shakes his head. “Nothing.” He gets up from the kitchen table and comes back with several thick file folders. “I brought these over last night once it was clear you were going to be out for a while.” He hands the files to Roy. “Most of them are eyewitness reports of strange alchemists in Lydfax. It’s a small town to the northwest. All in all, there are about fifty separate alchemists reported, near as I can tell. None of the ones reported seem to be from the military labs, at least, but...” 

“But it’s weird to have so many alchemists in a single small town,” Roy finishes. He looks up. “What’s the population? And the main export?” 

Edward grins and hands him another file, this one about half as thick as the rest. “Here you go.” 

Roy looks at it in disbelief. “Who put this together?” 

Edward blinks. “I’m a little offended that you don’t think I’m capable of it.” 

“Did you?” 

“Yes! Well, Al helped, but still.” Edward crosses his arms and stares down at Roy. “I do my research.” 

Roy shrugs and opens the file. 

“Population: five thousand,” Roy mutters, scanning the first page. “It’s already weird for there to be a concentration of alchemists that high per person. Especially in a town that small.” 

Edward says nothing, just waits for him to read further. 

“Main export: graphite.” Roy’s gaze snaps up to Edward. “No wonder you’re suspicious. That many alchemists around that much carbon...” 

Edward nods. “Which is why I need backup. I can handle a few rogue alchemists on my own, but only half of the ones reported would be too many for me. Even if they’re not all there at the same time, I’d be overwhelmed. Normally I’d take Al, but he and Mei are off planting flowers or whatever it is they do together for the next month and a half.” 

“Is that what you think people do on romantic getaways?” Roy can feel the corners of his lips curling in amusement. 

“Oh,” Edward says, “Like you would know.” 

Roy gives him his best innocent expression, the one that has convinced many policemen over the years that he was drunk and lost and not actually trespassing and attempting high-level military espionage. 

Edward just looks at him, eyebrows raised. “I’m not an idiot, Mustang. I know you don’t date.” 

Edward isn’t necessarily wrong, but Roy has no intention of letting him know that. “I have no idea what you mean.” 

Edward rolls his eyes. “I followed you a few years back, that month I was in Central to help put together the Alchemical Ethics Enforcement task force. I couldn’t figure out how you knew so much and I didn’t believe you could get that many beautiful women to hang around you for more than an hour. Well, aside from Hawkeye,” he amends, “but she’s weird.” 

“Right.” The mention of Riza has left a sour taste in his mouth and a guilty feeling in his stomach. 

Edward glances at him and Roy swears he sees Edward’s face turn from smug triumph to confusion to pity to something else in all of half a second. 

“Anyways, I asked around about your aunt’s bar after that and I figured it out pretty quick.” 

Roy, against his will, is impressed. The very fact that Edward managed to tail him without him noticing is impressive enough, but if he somehow found people who knew who Chris was _and_ got information out of them? Maybe Edward has actually managed to learn things other than alchemy in the past seven years. Roy never thought he’d see the day. 

“Fine,” Roy says, “I admit that those aren’t real dates. Still, don’t you have enough faith in my ability to charm people to think that I might have actually had a few romantic getaways of my own?” 

“Maybe,” Edward concedes, “though frankly I don’t think you’re as charming as everybody says, so jury’s still out.” 

Roy raises one eyebrow skeptically, saying nothing. 

“Well,” Edward clears his throat. “The point is, I need backup from a half-decent fighter and a more than decent alchemist. You fit the bill perfectly.” 

Roy considers the proposal. It’s not like he has anything else to do, and it’s as good a distraction as any. (And a far better distraction than getting horribly drunk again.) 

“I’ll come,” he says. “Give me an hour. I’ll read the rest of the files on the train.” 

“You will?” Edward’s brows shoot up in surprise. 

“Did you come here expecting me to say no?” 

“Well, yeah, to be honest.” Edward rubs the back of his head awkwardly. “I thought I’d be messing around in Central until Al got back. But this is much better.” 

Roy gives him a skeptical look. 

“I mean,” Edward amends, “It’s faster, at least.” 

Roy shakes his head and gets up, washing his plate and setting it in the dish rack to dry along with the myriad of mugs Edward has somehow been able to use in the past thirteen hours. Forget the link with Al’s body, maybe his addiction to coffee was the reason for his stunted growth. 

“Stop judging me,” Edward says, somehow reading his mind. “You’re a hypocrite.” 

Roy bites back a smile. Edward, again, isn’t wrong. 

It’s a three hour train ride to Thatchpoole, the closest station to Lydfax, and then a half hour’s walk from there to Edward’s hideout. Thanks to Roy’s long held policy of procrastinating any unimportant work, he now possesses the ability to read through half a day’s worth of papers in an hour. What he reads is disturbing. 

Lydfax, established as a graphite mining town by the military about thirty years ago, initially had a population of fifteen thousand people. All of them, except the few military families stationed there, were miners. Six years ago, when Roy and Grumman had managed to argue the generals stationed in Aerugo and Creta in to negotiating peace agreements, the military had cut its spending in half. Lydfax’s subsidies went with it, and so did 90% of its graphite production. For three years after that, Lydfax’s economy and population declined. Only a fifth of the original population was left—those too poor to find better work. Then, three years ago, the town’s population and economy began to increase again. On paper, though, they weren’t selling any more graphite. 

“They must be selling enormous amounts under the table. It says here,” Roy points to one of the pages he has spread out over the seat next to him, “that they just paid taxes on a public bathhouse. No one pays for one of those unless they have more money than they know what to do with.” 

“The one thing I can’t figure out is who they could be selling it too, though.” Edward’s resting his head in his hand, elbow braced against the window as he watches the countryside roll by. “The military primarily used it in steel production and as a dry lubricant for machinery. A small portion of that was sent to the laboratories for a carbon source. Even the military laboratories couldn’t use more than a tenth of the graphite Lydfax produced in a year. They’re still only at a quarter of their original production, but it would take an enormous group of alchemists to use that much up. An enormous group of alchemists synthesizing carbon-based substances.” He looks towards Roy, “My first guess was fuel sources, but there are tons of towns who are selling those cheaply now that military demand has gone down.” 

“So, you think it could be something worse,” Roy infers. He doesn’t need to say what, exactly, is carbon-based and worse. They both already know. 

Ed nods. “Al and I started asking around about the alchemists there— trying to figure out if any of them were involved with the labs— but it’s been slow going. And it’s not like I can go asking around on my own.” 

“You need someone less... conversationally challenged,” Roy fills in, noting with satisfaction the way Edward’s head swings around to face him and the way his face is scrunched up with anger. 

“I am not,” he hisses loudly, “conversationally challenged.” People from every part of the car turn to look at him. He looks around, frowns, and Roy watches as Edward moves to flip them all off. 

Roy’s gaze flicks down to Edward’s hand, then back up to Edward’s eyes. He sits back in his seat and tilts his head just slightly. 

“Fine,” Edward mutters, “Point taken. I need some conversational lubricant occasionally.” 

Roy pauses, blinks once, blinks again. “Do you mean conversation grease?” 

Edward pauses. “Same thing,” he says, the set of his shoulders giving away that he is very aware that they are not the same thing. He frowns, casting an angry glance back at Roy before quickly looking away again, as if Roy is suddenly going to forget that Edward exists. Roy doesn’t say anything. “Just shut up,” Edward says. 

“Gladly,” Roy says, pressing his lips together to avoid smiling, “provided you never use that phrase in front of me again.” 

“Dramatic fucking...” Ed devolves in to mumbling a long string of insults. 

“I’m not the one who once ‘fixed’ Havoc’s desk chair by adding skulls and spikes to it.” 

“That’s not drama, that’s flair,” Edward finally meets Roy’s eyes again. “Besides, I was fourteen, cut me some slack. I’m sure you did stupid shit when you were fourteen too.” 

“When I was fourteen,” Roy says, “I stayed inside all day reading books about alchemy.” 

Edward stares at him suspiciously. “I did that when I was eight.” 

Roy wants to laugh at the expression on Edward’s face. “What?” 

“That better not mean I turn in to you in a few years.” 

Roy snorts. “Not a chance. You wouldn’t last a day in politics.” 

“And isn’t that a relief,” Edward sighs. 

“Something against politicians, Edward?” Roy asks, syrupy sweet. 

“Only as much as the next guy. Well,” Edward amends, refusing to rise to Roy’s obvious bait. “aside from the one I owe money to. He can be a real pain in the ass.” 

Ed stretches and Roy notices for the first time how very defined his collar bones are and the way the shadows from passing trees skim over the hollow of his throat. 

A suitcase falls over, shaking Roy out of his distracted reverie. “He probably has his reasons.” 

The corners of Edward’s mouth quirk up at that. “I’m sure he does.” 

Roy can feel himself smiling slightly as he looks back down at the files. 

“Oh, and Mustang?” 

“Yes?” Roy tilts his head up to look at Edward. 

“Call me Ed. You sound like an old man when you call me Edward.” 

Roy arches his eyebrow at Edward skeptically. “God forbid I sound old.” 

Edward merely meets his eyes and shrugs in response to Roy’s unasked question. 

Edward Elric— Ed— seems to be a lot better at keeping secrets than he used to be. 

Edward’s hideout is an old cabin, secreted away in the woods. It’s covered in vines, dead leaves, and is beginning to grow a smattering of moss. Roy takes one look at it and nearly turns around. 

“Are you sure it’s safe?” 

Ed huffs. “Al just left the rotten wood on the outside when he helped me fix it up. He used stone walls for load-bearing supports and there’s a thin tin roof. There’s also a well and an outhouse and some other stuff in the back.” He frowns at Roy. “Are you coming, or not?” 

“I’m coming.” 

Ed was right. The inside looks structurally sound, at least according to Roy’s basic knowledge of architecture. Not that it’s a surprise, but Ed and Alphonse know their stuff. In the center of the room is a large square table with a map in the center and two stools. The left-hand side boasts a small fireplace and cookstove shoved in the corner. On the right are two raised platforms with some bedding. 

Roy sighs. His back isn’t going to enjoy that. 

Ed doesn’t seem to notice his sigh. “Al left about a week ago. Just when things were getting good, too.” He frowns. “It took us a month to get all the files together and then he up and leaves me because his girlfriend is in town.” 

“You do have the advantage,” Roy reminds him, “what with your girlfriend actually living in Amestris.” 

“What?” Edward looks up at him, confused. “Who?” 

Roy raises his eyebrows, bemused. “Weren’t you and the automail mechanic together? The pretty blond one?” 

“Winry?” Ed waves a hand in dismissal. “We broke it off two years ago. I could never stay still and she needed someone who would stay with her. She’s dating a friend of hers called Paninya now.” 

“Oh,” Roy is surprised, and he knows it shows. He had expected Edward and Winry to get together after the Promised Day. They had both so clearly been in love with each other, and people like Winry and Ed fall in love for life. 

“Don’t get me wrong,” Ed says, walking over to the table and dropping the files down on it. “I still love her and she still loves me, for some reason. We’re just not cut out to be in love with each other. Different lifestyles, I guess.” 

“That’s very mature of you.” 

Ed turns so Roy can’t see his face. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Nothing,” Roy raises his hands in surrender. “I just didn’t expect it. You’ve changed a lot since we last spent much time together.” 

Ed snorts derisively. “Yeah, that happens when people grow up.” He turns around to look at Roy. “Don’t patronize me.” 

Roy pauses. “I won’t,” he promises, and he means it. “Anyways, it’s getting dark out. What’s the plan for tonight?” 

“Rest,” Ed says, giving Roy a flat look when he opens his mouth to protest. “What are you, fifty? Sixty? I doubt your aging body can handle a night of running through the forest right after a hangover.” 

“I’m thirty-six,” Roy grumbles, but he sets his bag down on the floor next to one of the “beds” and slips out of his jacket before sitting down on one of the stools. “I’m the youngest person above a Major. Even by normal standards, I’m won’t be middle-aged for another few years.” 

“Sure,” Ed says, “If that’s what you have to tell yourself.” 

“It’s times like these I wish you were still technically in the military so I could send you on a very painful assignment a very long way away from me,” Roy mutters. 

Ed gives him a shit-eating grin. “Perks of being an independent contractor. I never have to respect the chain of command again.” 

“You didn’t respect it before,” Roy points out with a long-suffering sigh. 

“True,” Ed shrugs, “but no one can try and punish me for it now. Besides, you agreed to come with me. You have no one to blame for this but yourself.” 

Roy, not for the first time, wishes that he had work waiting for him back at Central. 

“Why _did_ you come along?” Ed asks. 

Roy frowns and looks away. “I have the week off.” 

“You mean someone— Hawkeye, I’m guessing— made you take the week off and told everyone to not let you work under any circumstances.” 

Sometimes, Roy wishes Ed was a lot less smart than he is. 

“Oh my god, you’re pouting about it!” Edward’s tone is filled with entirely too much glee. “This is incredible! I always knew you were faking about wanting to slack off.” 

“That wasn’t faking,” Roy protests, “I really was trying to slack off! It’s just that my work now is interesting!” 

Edward is doubled over laughing. “Sure, and transmuting diamonds from coal is hard. Face it, Hawkeye finally got to you. 

Roy looks at Edward for a second, then looks away determinedly. “Fine,” Roy says, “Believe what you want.” 

Ed wipes a tear from his eye, but manages to calm down. “Sorry,” Ed says. “I won’t bring it up again.” 

Roy gives a slight nod of thanks. If he can’t avoid thinking about Riza by doing his job, he can at least avoid thinking about her by doing someone else’s. 

“What’s your cover?” 

Ed sobers. “Al and I claimed to be brothers looking for a good family vacation home in a small town. It was the least suspicious thing we could come up with, considering that there aren’t any tourist attractions and one of the new restaurants was featured in a magazine six months ago.” 

Roy frowns. “That doesn’t leave a lot of room for me to come up with a convincing identity.” 

“You can be my sister-in-law's brother,” Ed says. “Al has shown them all pictures of Mei, and you look Xingese enough to be her brother. What are you, a quarter?” 

Roy nods. “My great-grandfather and great-grandmother were from Xing. That should work for an identity, but why am I here?” 

“I’ll tell them Mei and Al have gone on a romantic getaway and you’re here helping me figure out the details.” Ed huffs. “They’ll believe it, too, since they all think that Al is the only one of us that can get things done talking to strangers.” 

Roy bites back a smirk. “I’ll be sure to be extra charming, then.” 

Ed gives him a look halfway between annoyed and amused. 

“What are you going by?” Roy asks. 

“Nathaniel. We’re calling Mei Hua Chang because Al insisted she wouldn’t want her clan name changed. Al is going by Alastair so no one gets mixed up when I call him Al.” 

Roy snorts. “You mean: so you don’t get mixed up and call him Al by accident and ruin the whole operation.” 

Ed huffs. “It only happened once.” He frowns. “I guess you can be—” 

“No,” Roy says, brooking no argument. “I am not letting you choose my name.” 

“Fine,” Ed frowns and crosses his arms. “Then what’ll it be?” 

Roy knows from Ed’s disappointed expression that he was absolutely going to try to give Roy a ridiculous name. He sighs in relief internally. At least he can still predict some of Ed’s moves. 

“Laurent,” he says after a moment. 

Ed frowns, worried. “Won’t it be suspicious that someone from Xing has a Cretan name?” 

Roy shrugs. “If anyone asks we’ll just tell them that I changed my name so Amestrians wouldn’t single me out.” He pauses. “You speak Cretan?” 

“A little,” Ed says, absentmindedly chewing on his lip. “It wasn’t hard to pick up once I got the irregular verbs down. I mean, same roots and all. They did keep telling me my accent was terrible and forcing me to speak in Amestrian while I was there, but I can get the gist of a conversation.” Ed huffs at Roy’s incredulous expression. “What? Alchemy isn’t the only thing I can learn.” 

Roy shakes his head slowly, impressed. “I’m beginning to get that.” 

“You don’t have to act so surprised about it.” 

Roy can feel a smile playing at the edge of his lips as he looks up at Ed. The last vestiges of sunlight are streaming through the hole where a window used to be, the air is warm but not humid, and the first few buttons on his shirt are undone. He feels comfortable for the first time in weeks, despite his sore back and the prospect of sleeping on the floor. 

Ed is looking down at him with a strange expression on his face; it almost seems affectionate. 

Ed tears his eyes away after a second, busying himself with rearranging the already arranged files. “You should get some sleep. You need the rest.” 

Roy nods slightly, and stands up. From behind, Ed cuts a strangely imposing figure. He doesn’t bother with a coat in summer and Roy can see the muscles of his back and shoulders under his black tank top. His hair, tied up in a ponytail, sweeps around one side of his neck. A beam of sunlight sweeps over his skin, turning it gold. 

Ed can clearly feel Roy’s eyes on him, because he turns around. “What?” There’s no accusation in his tone, just confusion. 

“Nothing,” Roy says, “Just lost in thought.” 

“Right,” Ed says, clearly unconvinced. 

Roy goes outside to the well to wash his face and brush his teeth. When he comes back inside, Ed is hunkered over the eyewitness reports, writing in a notebook as he reads. Roy sits down before unbuttoning his shirt fully and stripping out of his pants, leaving him in his undershirt and boxers. He briefly hears the scratching of Ed’s pencil stop as he presumably realizes what Roy is doing, but the sound resumes a moment later. Roy lies down, pulling the blanket over himself, and closes his eyes. Before he falls asleep fully, he swears he can feel Ed watching him. 

He wakes up before Ed the next morning and starts making coffee from the jar that Ed keeps in his bag. Ed is still not a morning person, because Roy is on his second cup by the time Ed wakes up and Ed immediately tries to go back to sleep. 

“It’s almost nine,” Roy calls as Ed turns over, pulling the blanket up higher. 

“Fuck off,” Ed says, and proceeds to bury his face in his pillow and flip Roy off. “I don’t have to wake up.” 

Roy lets out an amused huff, shrugs, and starts looking through Ed and Alphonse’s notes on the miners and townspeople they’d met. He doesn’t want for breakfast (they’d picked up a few things in Thatchpoole), so he’s fine switching between reading the notes and glancing at Ed’s sprawled out form. He still sleeps the same way he did when he was fifteen. That comes as a strange relief. 

It’s another hour until Ed rises for real. Roy watches as Ed stumbles out into the yard with an amazing lack of coordination. When Ed returns, he seems marginally more human, but his hair is a mess and the first and only thing he says is “Coffee.” 

Roy shrugs, figuring the incredible show is worth at least one cup, even if he has to make a new pot. 

By the time Roy plunks down a cup in front of him, Ed is half asleep again. Roy watches in a mixture of horror and amusement as Ed downs the entire cup in one go. 

“Stop judging me,” Ed mutters. 

“I’m not judging,” Roy says, judging him, “I’m just impressed.” 

Ed huffs, gets up, pours himself another cup, and drains that one as well before finally rifling through his bag for some food. He turns around and freezes. “Why aren’t you dressed?” 

“You’re not dressed either,” Roy points out, perfectly reasonably. “I didn’t think your sensibilities were delicate enough for them to be offended by this.” 

“Fine.” Ed shoves an entire piece of bread in his mouth and then stalks over to his bag and pulls on his ridiculous leather pants. 

Roy resists the urge to roll his eyes, and dresses as well. 

The walk into town is short, just a few minutes along a barely-there trail to the main road, and then another few to the cluster of buildings that constitutes the center of town. 

There are three restaurants, two bars, a city hall, a school, and, of course, a towering monstrosity of a bathhouse, surrounding a suspiciously extravagant central fountain. Behind the school is a small park with a playground, and behind the other buildings are apartments. 

“You see what I mean?” Edward mutters out of the corner of his mouth. “No town this out-of-the-way should have all this.” 

Roy makes a low sound of agreement. It is weird. Though the military usually established a bar or a restaurant in the mining towns for the military families that would move there to oversee the operation, this level of relative opulence is unheard of. Stranger still is that fact that all the buildings, especially the fountain, look no more than a few years old. 

“We’ll head to that café first,” Ed says. “Al managed to charm the lady who owns it and she’s been telling us all sorts of things in an effort to get us to stay.” 

The building is light and airy on the inside, with a patio into a small garden in the back and freshly painted white walls. There’s a small counter in the right hand corner, with a door and a stairwell behind it that Roy assumes lead to the kitchen and the owner’s apartment, respectively. There are a smattering of people sitting in there. Roy counts a mother and child on the left, a young man flirting with a waitress near the counter, and a middle-aged man in a deep purple coat and hat on the patio. 

He glances at Edward unobtrusively, checking if he’s seen the man too. He nods. No one in this town, regardless of how much money they’re making from selling under the table, would have the money or use for clothes like that. Odds are, he’s an alchemist. He’s turned away from them, though, so they can’t ID him. Damn. 

Ed leads Roy to the counter and introduces him to the woman standing there. She’s not old, but her hair is greying and she has smile lines around her eyes. 

“Hey,” Edward says, giving her a small wave. “How are you doing today, ma’am?” 

“Nathaniel!” She exclaims. “You’re back! But where’s your brother?” Her smile noticeably lessens when she doesn’t see Al. 

Edward smiles awkwardly and rubs at the back of his head as if he’s embarrassed. “Sorry, but he’s visiting his fiancée in East City. He said to send you my regards.” 

She smiles. “What a sweet boy. Tell him to bring his fiancée when he comes back, I’d love to meet her.” She finally seems to notice Roy, and she turns to him with a little suspicion. “And who is this?” 

“I’m Laurent, ma’am,” Roy says, “I’m Hua’s brother. Nathaniel brought me along here for some help while Alistair is gone. He wants it to be a surprise for Al and Hua. Between you and me,” he stage whispers, “Nathaniel needs a little help talking to people sometimes.” He can feel Ed twitch in annoyance behind him and he resists the urge to smirk. 

“Oh, of course, dear,” she pats his cheek. “What a sweet thing to do for your sister. I’m Doris.” 

“Well thank you so much, Doris,” Roy says, pouring on the charm, “I’ve heard you’ve been pestering Nathaniel and Al to find a vacation home here. I’m so glad you have; my sister would love this town. The way in is gorgeous! So many old homes. And with such lovely people, I’m sure she’d feel right at home.” 

“Well aren’t you a charmer,” Doris simpers, and Roy somehow knows that Ed is rolling his eyes. 

Roy laughs, pretending to be embarrassed by her compliment. “So I’m told, ma’am.” 

Ed clears his throat loudly. 

“Alright, alright,” Doris says, “I can see I’m taking up Nathaniel’s time. What’ll it be?” 

“Just cup of coffee, please,” Ed says. 

Doris already has a pot brewing; she pours him a cup immediately. Roy gives her the money, making sure his hand lingers for longer than necessary on hers. Too much flirting never hurt anyone. 

“You be sure to come back,” she says, looking at Roy. “And snap up one of those big old houses on the way in real quick. They’re going like crazy. All sorts of out-of-towners buying them up.” She laughs. “I’m not complaining, though. They give me great business.” 

Roy nods and smiles. “I’ll be sure to remember that. Have a good day, ma’am.” 

They choose a table on the patio with a good vantage point of the man in purple. Roy cedes the seat with the view of the man to Ed. There’s a chance, however small, that the alchemist might recognize him. Better to give him on a view of Roy’s back. 

“Can you ID him?” Roy mutters as soon as they sit down. 

Ed shakes his head, bringing the cup of coffee to his lips. “He’s not former military.” 

“Damn,” Roy swears. “At least then we’d know he’s involved. As it is, he could just be a random alchemist who likes to get his ingredients himself.” 

“Not likely,” Ed replies. “Name one alchemist with enough money for clothes like that who doesn’t pay an assistant to go get them totally harmless things.” 

“Fair point. Still,” he pauses, “we can’t rule it out.” 

“We need to tail him,” Ed concludes. 

Roy nods. “You should go. I’ll go snoop around those houses.” 

Ed’s answering nod is serious for a moment before it turns to mischief. “That was very sleazy, by the way.” He nods at Doris. “When I said I needed charm, I didn’t mean I needed you to get in her pants.” 

Roy snorts. “Please, I was just getting to that when you cut me off.” 

“I know,” Ed says. “I hate going searching for ingredients and I would have had to find some acid to burn my eyes out if I had seen a minute more of that.” He makes a face. 

“What,” Roy says, smirking, “were you jealous?” He does not anticipate the response. 

Edward sputters on his coffee. “Hardly!” 

“Right,” Roy says, “you prefer to get brained with a wrench as a form of courtship.” 

“Better than flirting by pretending to be lazy so she’ll come tell you off for it,” Ed fires back. 

Roy’s smile drops off his face. “Right.” 

Ed’s smile drops as well. “Look, I’m not gonna push if you don’t want to talk about it, but it’s Hawkeye, right? You freeze up then go cold every time I mention her.” 

Roy looks way from Ed, thinking. It’s not that Ed will tell anyone— who would he tell? Alphonse clearly already has some inkling, if he sent Ed to Roy, and Ed’s not stupid enough to tell anyone in the military. On the other hand, Roy really doesn’t want the lecture Ed is going to give him if he tells him the whole thing. A half-truth, he decides. He’ll tell him a half-truth. 

“Major Hawkeye took some time off,” Roy says, finally, “When she came back, she thought it would be a good idea for me to do the same. 

“Oh,” Ed’s eyes widen in understanding and Roy realizes he might have gotten the wrong idea— that Ed thinks that _Riza_ is avoiding _Roy_. 

“Don’t go imagining things that aren’t there,” Roy growls, still avoiding looking Ed in the eyes. 

“Right,” Ed’s brow furrows and Roy knows that he’s going through possible scenarios at a rapid rate in his head. “I know you two were close—” 

“She’s my adjutant,” Roy cuts in. “She’s never been anything more.” 

It’s obvious Ed doesn’t believe him. Maybe he’s losing his touch as a liar. Maybe Ed just knows him better than he’d like. 

Ed opens his mouth to say something, but the alchemist behind them shifts and Ed’s gaze darts back to Roy, sharper and more analytical than it was a moment before. Ed gives him a look that means ‘fine, I’ll drop this for now’ and Roy silently praises whatever god that keeps getting him out of these things. Then Ed very loudly and very deliberately spills his coffee on to his lap. 

“Aw, damnit,” he says, quite a bit louder than necessary. “I spilled my coffee.” 

Roy visibly winces, playing along. “Oh no,” he says loudly, “I think you’ll have to change.” 

Ed rubs vigorously at where the coffee spilled on to his black shirt, but he soon throws the napkin away in disgust. “Ugh, I guess I’ll have to go back.” 

“You don’t mind if I sightsee, do you?” Roy’s tone is bright and very faked. 

“Nah,” Ed says in a stunningly good impression of someone resigned to miss out on things. “You go ahead. See you in a bit.” 

Roy tries to wipe up the remnants of Edward’s “accidental” spill, but Doris comes bustling in. 

“Don’t you worry about that.” She swats at his hands. “You go ahead and have a good time.” 

Roy surreptitiously checks that the alchemist is gone. He is. 

“Alright, ma’am,” Roy says. “I’m so sorry about that.” 

“It’s no problem,” Doris says, “this is my job.” 

“Right,” Roy smiles brightly at her in thanks and leaves. 

It’s a surprising relief when he drops the act. 

Roy follows the main road until about fifty meters from where he remembers the first house coming from town to be. Then, he ducks in to the woods, rolls up the hems of his pants so they don’t get dirty, and thanks his lucky stars that he remembered what missions with the Elrics were like and so thought ahead to bring and wear military-issue boots. (He also silently thanks Bradely for making them so durable. Even civilians go out of their ways to find some at surplus stores which means that he can wear them here without being spotted.) 

It’s been at least week or two since it has rained, Roy surmises. The ground isn’t muddy and the plant life is looking a little dry. It does mean he’ll have to be more careful about not getting close enough for people to hear the dry leaves crackling, but he’ll take that trade off. At least he won’t have to hike through mud. 

The back of the first house approaches. It’s an old thing, or at least it has been kept up so badly that it looks old. He thinks he spies a flaking coat of white paint under the layers of undergrowth that have started claiming the building. There are no cars in the driveway or in the garage. He frowns and moves on. 

There are about sixteen houses along the road, eight on one side, eight on the other. Roy remembers seeing them on his walk in to town. They started up about fifteen minutes from Thatchpoole. At the rate he’s going, it’s going to take him an hour to the farthest house on the left, and another hour back for the houses on the right. He sighs, stretches, and gets to work. 

The next four houses don’t have any signs of life in them either. 

“’Going like crazy’, my ass,” Roy mutters. “She probably just wants to lock them in as customers for life.” 

The fifth house is the first one with any surprises. Like the others, there are no cars in the garage or the driveway, but as he passes by, he notices tire tracks in the dust. Roy circles around the house, staying in the bushes so anyone driving up won’t see him. The stairs up to the door have vague and dusty footprints, and— jackpot— the door is freshly painted. 

Roy goes back around the house and jimmies the lock on the back door. He doesn’t have to worry about anyone being home. Career alchemists rich enough to buy a house in a no-name town just for graphite smuggling purposes are not the sort of people who walk. 

He wipes his boots on the grass outside before entering (no need to give anyone the idea that they’re being spied on), then enters the house. 

There’s a hallway right away with two sets of stairs: one up, one down. Roy frowns. Alchemists like basements and attics. That’s a well-known fact. He tries the attic first. 

Unfortunately, he climbs three flights of stairs only to find an empty room gaining water damage around two of the sides. He frowns. 

The basement is far better than the attic. There aren’t any electric lights, but lanterns abound. He takes his chances with using one and hopes the owner won’t notice. He needs to see more. 

The basement looks old, patched together by someone who needed a makeshift study. It’s covered in messily transmuted stone structural supports and several rugs that look to be very valuable antiques. A single desk with a single chair is shoved up against the left wall. Strangest of all is the far wall. It’s covered in arrays painted in a lurid red. 

He goes closer, pulling out a notebook and sketching them down. A few are familiar—attempts at immortality that had been circulated by Bradley as warnings; a few more he can figure out most of himself— coal to diamonds, skin restoration, synthesizing of blood; the majority, however, are beyond him. If he had enough time and resources, he could sit down there and figure each one out. As it is, his time is limited and while he knows an incredible amount about alchemy, he doesn’t possess the enviable Elric trait of being able to figure out any array one looks at. He sketches down the ones he doesn’t know first, before moving to the ones he does. 

He’s gotten closer and closer to the wall as he’d copied them down, so close that he’s not standing on the rugs any longer. He sighs, rubs his eyes, and shifts his weight. As his foot moves, it lifts up the edge of the carpet. Beneath it is a bright red curved line, painted carefully on the floor. He frowns and puts away his notebook. This is more important. 

Roy pulls up the rest of the carpet, folding it over until the entire circle is revealed. It’s big and complicated, like the first circles taught to novices, filled with detailed writing. Roy allows himself a small amount of satisfaction; this one, at least, he should be able to figure out on his own. Thank god for mediocre alchemists who still rely on complicated circles to visualize transmutations. 

He stares at the circle, starting at the middle, the focus point, and working his way outwards. There’s far too much writing for him to copy it all down, and it’s worn away besides. No, Roy realizes, not worn away. Obscured. He reaches down and swipes his thumb over the letters. A grey, greasy residue sticks to his hand. Graphite. Jackpot indeed. 

Roy leans down to get a better look, but a sound from above makes him pause. He can hear the front door creak open and someone stomp in. Several someones, judging by the amount of footsteps. Roy swears under his breath. 

Quickly, he tosses the rug back in to its original position, extinguishes the lamp, and desperately prays that the people won’t come down to the basement immediately. His luck must have run out, because he hears the telltale sound of creaking stairs as the party descends to the basement. 

He looks around wildly, searching for somewhere to hide. There isn’t anywhere. The desk offers no cover and the pillars are just too thin to hide behind. He swears again. He has only moments left. 

Four middle-aged men enter, dressed fairly extravagantly. Roy doesn’t exactly spend his free time frequenting designer stores, but he knows enough about clothes to know that the ones they’re wearing aren’t just made to look expensive. 

The first of the group freezes as he gets to the bottom of the stairs. He holds up a hand, and the rest of the group stops. 

“What is it?” The third man asks. 

The first man grunts angrily. “It feels like someone’s messed around with the room.” He swears. “I told that maid not to come down here!” 

Roy breathes a sigh of relief and resolves to find out who the maid is and send her flowers when this is all over. He has a feeling that he’s just gotten her in trouble. 

The men walk past where he’s hiding without a second glance. Roy resists the urge to smirk. That’s the problem with shoddy transmutations from second-rate alchemists. You leave too much space for other people to do quick transmutations of their own and have it blend in seamlessly. 

The wall that Roy is hiding in creaks in protest. He frowns. Maybe he shouldn’t be talking so much about second-rate alchemists if his on-the-fly transmutations are so mediocre. 

He has left a small hole for him to look out of with a good vantage point of the circle on the floor. To his chagrin, the small group of alchemists don’t seem to be doing anything other than standing around talking. 

Finally, one pulls the carpet off the circle and the other begin adding to it. Roy can’t see what they’re adding from here, which means he’ll have to come back later. He frowns. He doesn’t relish coming back to this house and possibly being stuck in the wall again. 

Thankfully, the alchemists finish their changes rather quickly and leave the basement. Roy waits until he hears the sound of a car driving off before disintegrating the wall he’d synthesized to hide behind. He’s sorely tempted to take another look at the circle on the floor, but he hears a pair of boots clunking heavily above him and surmises that it might be better to get out immediately, so he rolls up his sleeves and makes a tunnel out. 

He emerges about twenty paces from where the woods fade in to the long grasses of the unkempt yard. Roy covers the hole with a thin stone cover and covers that with a pile of leaves. He puts a stick in the ground near the hole as a marker. It’s not great, but it’ll have to do. At least they have a way back in for later. 

Ed isn’t at the hideout when he gets back. Roy didn’t expect him to be. He’d been gone for only an hour and a half. Odds are, Ed tails the man in the purple hat for at least another few. Roy takes the time to stretch and wash the graphite off his hand before getting down to work deciphering the unknown arrays. 

He’s got a few theories on about half of them by the time Ed gets back. Ed, clearly, did not enjoy his afternoon so much as Roy did, and that’s saying something, as Roy was stuck in a wall for a good twenty minutes. 

“What’s got you looking so chipper?” Roy’s sly comment comes the second Ed enters. There’s something about the guy that makes him want to make more assholeish remarks than he normally does. Normally, he’d restrain himself, but it’s not like Ed can get him in trouble for being a dick. 

“Shut up,” Ed groans, “you didn’t have to follow an old man all afternoon. He walked so slow.” 

“He looked to be in his late forties,” Roy points out. 

“Yeah,” Ed says, like what Roy said agreed with his point, “old.” 

“Ah, the optimism of youth,” Roy says, and he’s resisting the urge to grin at how annoyingly facetious he sounds. “One day you’ll understand the aging mind and you’ll realize how young most people are.” 

“Ah, the idiocy of ranking Military officers,” Ed says, mimicking his tone, “pissing off the people they’re working with for their own amusement.” 

Roy shrugs, not bothering to deny Ed’s accusation. It’s not like he has a reasonable defense. “Did you at least find something out?” 

“Yeah, actually,” Ed collapses on to the school opposite Roy. “He met up with the mayor, who— coincidence— is also the foreman of the mines. I’ve never talked to the guy, but people around here like him.” 

Roy leans back in his chair, considering. “Well, at least we have proof of where the graphite is going..” 

“There’s more,” Ed says. “Apparently, they’re needing a shipment of more graphite for some party they’re having.” 

“Party meaning..?” 

Ed shrugs. “Something fucked up. I don’t know.” 

Roy snorts. “You’re probably right.” He pushes the open notebook across the table. “Look what I found when I started poking around those old houses. The first four were useless, but the fifth one on the left had a very interesting basement. Those,” he points to the notebook pages covered in arrays, “were on one of the walls.” 

Ed’s brows draw together the way he does when he’s thinking. “That’s promising.” 

“That’s not all.” Roy leans forward. “There was another array underneath a rug. It was complicated— like the sort of thing you’d give to a kid to make water from air— and I didn’t have the chance to get a good look before some company showed up.” 

“What?” Ed looks up, a tinge of worry in his voice. 

“They didn’t see me,” Roy assures, “they just made alterations to the array on the floor.” 

“Hm.” Ed, for some reason, does not seem all that reassured by the thought that Roy wasn’t caught. 

“In any case,” Roy continues, choosing to ignore Ed’s expression, “the array on the floor was covered in huge amounts of graphite. Enough transmutation leftovers to cover the entire thing.” 

Trace transmutation leftovers are common. You can’t measure out exact amounts, no matter how careful you are. Naturally, there’s always going to be a little left over. In most cases, the amount is so small that it’s invisible. If enough of an element builds up on an array, it means that someone has been using it a huge amount and hasn’t been particularly careful with what they’re doing. 

“Whatever the graphite from this town is used for,” Roy says, “it’s being done there.” 

Ed nods. “I need to see that array.” 

“I know,” Roy says. “I made a tunnel in.” 

Ed starts to get up. 

“We can’t go tonight,” Roy intercedes before Ed can get out the door. “There’s someone home and it’s too much of a risk.” 

“Damn,” Ed swears. 

“We have enough work to do anyways.” Roy nods to the open notebook. “I need your help deciphering some of those.” 

Ed frowns, but sits back down, pulling his stool next to Roy’s. 

“So,” he says, “which ones were you having trouble with?” 

Roy points to the first one. “It’s for some sort of carbon-based molecule synthesis, I know that much.” 

“Hm,” Ed frowns, looks at it for a second, then looks back up. “It’s glycerol.” 

“How do you know?” Roy asks. God but he wishes he could do what Ed does. Not just the instant decoding of arrays, but the ability to put together obscure bits of trivia that he’d memorized in a way that made everything look easy. When he’d seen Edward Elric transmute at first, he’d thought that the clapping was all it took. Now he knows better. The clapping is the activation. Edward Elric wasn’t dangerous because he could make spears, he was dangerous because he could look at a wall and come up with an array to extract the necessary materials without compromising the structural integrity, and he could do it in less than half a second. Even Roy— who has to do calculations for humidity and air pressure and wind speed at a moment’s notice every time he snaps— even Roy— who is rightfully called a genius for what he does— can’t do anything on the level that Ed could do when he was just thirteen. 

Ed frowns. “You have the symbol for “carbon” overlaid with “forge” in the center, right? That’s the focus point— the object of transmutation.” 

Roy nods more for the sake of showing he’s listening than anything else. Ed isn’t telling him anything he doesn’t know. 

“There,” Ed says, “shooting out from the center, are three lines. In Amestrian alchemy, those lines mean bonds, so you would put the element that the single carbon is bonded to on the other end. But,” he pauses, “this looks Aerugonean in origin. They have a tendency to overlay their elements with symbols. Amestrian alchemists like to keep things separate, at least when composing arrays. If it’s Aerugonean, then the meaning of the lines changes. I noticed when I was there that they use lines connected to a source to give the number of atoms in the molecule, not to signify bonds. Then, look, on the sides there’s the symbol for water. It’s not just giving the state of matter of the synthesized substance, it’s actually telling you what else is in the molecule: hydrogen and oxygen.” 

“But how do you get the amounts from that?” Roy’s interest is seriously piqued. “The “forge” in the middle could also refer to bonds for macromolecules, and you can make a dissacharide from three carbons, oxygen, and hydrogen.” 

“That’s the thing,” Ed says, a self-satisfied smile on his face, “the “forge” isn’t just in the center, it’s overlaying the carbon—” 

“Which implies that the three carbons are bonded,” Roy finishes, biting back a smile. “Clever.” 

Ed shrugs. “It’s what I do.” 

Roy raises his eyebrows. “I could have been referring to the array.” 

“But you weren’t,” Ed says with perfect confidence. “Besides, I know you don’t think that array was particularly clever. I’ve seen the flame one, remember?” 

“And what is that supposed to tell me?” Roy crosses his arms and leans back, a smile curling at the corners of his mouth. 

Ed rolls his eyes. “I know you made it yourself. I mean, the fire at the top was obvious and the lizard at the bottom wasn’t hard to get, but the center was a work of art. You know how hard it is to make an array that no one can crack, but you managed it anyways.” 

Roy frowns slightly. “I didn’t come up with it myself.” 

“Well, not completely,” Ed says, “I know that. But you reduced it, I’m assuming. I’ve never actually seen the original.” 

“I did a little work on it,” Roy admits. “Mostly just getting rid of all the surrounding text.” 

“You were clever enough to be able to use an array without the support of most of the array,” Ed argues. “Even if you took the base design, you would have had to change enough that it effectively became your own. And it’s especially impressive that you managed to keep it simple enough that almost no one could figure it out without losing any of the control the original one afforded you. Not changing the design is actually harder.” 

Roy huffs. “Sure. But you still haven’t gotten to your point.” 

“It’s an array within an array,” Edward says. “The circle provided stability, and the flame and the lizard provided counterbalances to ensure that you could trigger the reaction and then focus on something else without it exploding in your face, but the real work was with the center. I mean, holy shit. The entire thing is made to look like it synthesizes fire when, really, it’s mostly meant to control the gases in the air.” He smirks. “That’s the reason no one could ever replicate your accuracy. They could create fire, but they couldn’t control the blasts. But,” Ed pauses, “that’s still pretty common knowledge, right?” 

_Not right,_ Roy wants to say. Riza only knew because her father had explained it, and Maes had only known because he’d been so annoyed by the idea of not knowing a secret that he’d bugged Roy in to telling him. 

“Anyways, I had Al try a few mockups to synthesize oxygen, but they were all super unwieldy. Then I figured it out.” Ed smirks. “Your array doesn’t synthesize or control oxygen, it manipulates the other gases to create a vacuum.” He shrugs. “Seems counterintuitively complicated to me, but if it works for you, I guess it’s fine.”

Roy’s jaw drops. 

“Oh, come on,” Ed says. “Don’t act like it was that difficult to figure out. I did it when I was sixteen and stuck in the hospital. 

“And you didn’t say anything?” 

Ed gives him a look. “I’m not an idiot, Mustang. I know what that array can do, even if the person using it doesn’t have access to the research behind it. Only Al knows what I know, and we intend on taking the secret to our graves.” 

Roy closes his mouth. “Thank you,” he says. 

Ed frowns and looks away. “It’s not exactly a hardship. It’s not like I could use it even if I wanted to,” he mutters. 

“I know,” Roy says. “But still. Thank you.” 

“Whatever,” Ed says, but Roy can see he’s turned slightly pink. “Let’s look at the rest of these.” 

“Right,” Roy says, wondering exactly how terrifying Edward Elric could have been if he was a little less sure of the sort of person he wanted to be. It’s not a thought he enjoys entertaining. “Let’s do that.” 

They get to the entrance to the tunnel around eleven the next morning. Ed, as per usual Ed style, had woken up late and proceeded to be an absolute nightmare of a human being until he had had more caffeine than could possibly be healthy. The show was no less entertaining for Roy than the first time he had seen it. 

The one perk of Ed’s habitual late rising is that the house will probably be empty by the time they get there. Roy does a sweep just in case, but there are no cars anywhere on the property and he doesn’t see or hear any movement from within. 

When he gets back to the entrance to the tunnel he’s created, Ed has climbed halfway up one of the oaks closest to the hole. 

Roy stops right beneath him and looks up, bemused. “Do I want to know why you’re in a tree, Ed?” 

Ed jumps down lithely, dropping lightly from branch to branch, sometimes using his hands to swing himself lower. Within a few second, he has landed lightly on the ground. He shrugs. “I saw a tree. I wanted to climb it.” 

“Ah,” Roy says, putting on an affected tone, “I remember when I had the joints to do that.” 

Ed rolls his eyes. “You’re thirty-six, not seventy.” 

Roy smirks at him and Ed realizes what he just said. 

“I mean, that’s still really old.” Ed backpedals furiously. “Just not as old.” 

Roy snorts, knowing he’s finally won an argument about his age, and shoves aside the stone covering the entrance to the tunnel. As he drops down, he can feel Ed glaring thoughtfully at his back. Roy didn’t even realize someone could glare thoughtfully, but Ed is a creature of contradictions. Somehow, he’s pulling it off. 

Ed pulls the stone back over the tunnel entrance and the two of them inch along in the dark. The passage itself is only wide enough for one person at a time. At least Roy doesn’t have to crouch, but Ed keeps bumping in to him. The third time it happens Roy deliberately steps on Ed’s toes and smiles in satisfaction when he hears Ed curse under his breath behind him. Thankfully, the tunnel stops before Ed can get revenge. 

Roy listens for any movement on the other side of the wall before getting rid of it. The basement is dark too, but the small of light coming from the stairs is enough to help Roy find a lantern and light it. As soon as there’s light, Ed goes to the far wall and pulls up the rug. Roy follows, hands the lantern to Ed, and starts looking at the array as well. 

It’s not even been a second before Roy hears Ed swear. He looks over and sees that Ed has gone deathly pale. 

“What is it?” 

Ed looks at him, eyes wide. “They’re trying to make homunculi.” 

_“What?”_

Ed grimaces, faintly pointing to the array. “I think we know what all the arrays on the wall are for now. Look, there’s the one for glycerol combined with one for phospholipids. And look, there’s a deconstructed globulin synthesis array inside a plasma one.” He looks back up at Roy. “They’re trying to make artificial bodies, no doubt about it. And judging by the amount of graphite left over, they’ve been trying to make a lot.” 

Roy grits his teeth and resists the urge to start pacing. “At least this is a solid indication that there are at least a few ex-military alchemists who are a part of this.” 

“You’re probably right,” Ed looks down at the circle, lips pressed together, “but if that’s the case, why aren’t there any soul arrays incorporated? Are they trying to create life without a soul? That’s not possible.” 

Roy pauses. “That might actually lend credence to the proof that they’re here. They know what the toll is for dealing with souls.” 

“Why bother with creating artificial bodies, then,” Ed asks, “if they’re not going to be usable?” 

The two of them stare at the array. 

“We need to figure out who’s behind this, and what they’re planning on,” Ed says. “Damnit.” 

Roy turns to him, brows drawn together in confusion. “What’s wrong?” 

“That party they’re having is our best bet, and I don’t want to hide in a wall just to watch them fuck up their transmutation circle anymore.” 

Roy snorts. “With any luck, it won’t come to that. I’ll ask around anyways, though. In a town this small, there’s got to be somebody who has heard something.” 

Ed takes one more look at the array before covering it up with the rug again. “I’m going to search more of the houses. Maybe they’ll have been stupid enough to leave their notes lying around.” 

“Alright.” Roy makes his way to the tunnel entrance as Ed walks up the stairs. “Ed?” 

“Yeah?” 

Roy turns his head just far enough for him to be able to see Ed out of the corner of his eye. “Try not to get caught.” 

Roy hits Doris’ café first, stopping there for lunch, before moving on to the grocery store, the other restaurants, and the bars. His digging yields more than he was expecting, but less than he had hoped. All he can gather is that the “out-of-towners" are throwing a party this Saturday night and that the townspeople aren’t so fond of them. Apparently, they tend to frequent a bar in Thatchpoole much more often than any of the establishments in Lydfax. 

It’s getting dark by the time he’s finished. The people of Lydfax may be chatty, but getting them to actually say anything of substance is tougher than Roy expected. Ugh, he’s been getting rusty at this, sitting behind a desk all day. Maybe Riza had been on to something when she’d banned him from work. Then again, she probably hadn’t had this in mind either. Lord knows what she thought Alphonse would do when she told him what was going on. As he thinks about the way he’s getting around Riza’s orders, a smug feeling rises in his chest— the sort of feeling born from petty revenge. Roy groans. He’s probably being an idiot. Riza has never been wrong before, after all. Roy frowns and resolves to stop thinking about it. He can deal with her later. 

The light is on when he returns. Ed is bent over the small cookstove, making dinner, and he barely looks up when Roy enters. 

Roy shrugs off his jacket, lying it on the table. “Any luck?” 

Ed fiddles with the knob on the stove before turning around. "“None.” 

“I didn’t get much either,” Roy says, slumping down on to one of the stools. He leans forward resting his elbows on the table and resting his head in his right hand as he watches Ed. “Just a vague time and a guess at a place. Oh, and a bar they frequent, which could be useful.” 

“Hm.” Ed turns off the stove. “Dinner?” 

“Sure.” 

They eat in silence, both lost in thought. Afterwards, Roy brings a bucket of water in to wash the plates. 

“The trouble is,” Roy says, drying the utensils, “we need a reason to be in the bar. Right now, if we walked in without some sort of purpose looking like this, no one would talk to us.” 

“It’s a bar, right? I can think of a few jobs that might require you to frequent a bar.” Edward says. He’s maintaining a straight expression quite well, but there’s a telltale twitch in his jaw that Roy knows means he’s trying to avoid smirking. 

“I can too,” Roy says, guarded, “and I might have a few ideas.” 

Ed shrugs, deadpan. “Alright. I’m on board. You’d make a decent prostitute.” 

Roy huffs, but he’s unable to hide the amusement in his voice. “I’d make an _amazing_ prostitute, but that’s not what I meant.” 

“Nah,” Ed says casually. “I’m pretty sure you’d have to be attractive for that.” 

“Hey!” Roy has no reason to be bothered by the implication that Ed thinks he’s unattractive. Despite that, he has the unyielding urge to prove him wrong. “I have a fanclub!” 

“Sure, sure,” Ed waves his hand dismissively, “but that’s just because they’re looking at you compared to all the old men you’re surrounded by. Besides,” and finally, the smirk makes its way onto his face, “they like that whole bad-boy thing you have going on. They think they can tame you. It’s so sad that they’ll all be disappointed one day when they figure out that you’re just a dick in a fancy uniform.” 

“Just because you’ve never worn a uniform a day in your life doesn’t mean it’s not important.” Roy grumbles. 

“And what’s the alternative?” Ed asks. “Designer suits every day?” 

“Well, I wasn’t raised in a barn.” Roy rolls his eyes. 

Ed huffs, more amused than annoyed, and Roy suddenly realizes that the lamplight next to him is casting a lovely shadow over him, turning his eyes from honey to gleaming pools of gold. The light is doing strange things to Ed’s collarbones as well, making them seem even sharper and even more delicate as the shadows cast by the lamp fall upon them, and Ed’s hair is glowing like a halo. 

Roy is struck with the realization that Edward Elric is unbelievably pretty, and if Roy ever tells him that— scratch that, if Roy ever tells anyone that— he’ll have to fake his death and run away to some country beyond Xing, provided Ed doesn’t manage to kill him for it first. 

“What are you looking at?” Ed presses his lips together and narrows his eyes in the way that means he is seriously close to pulling out his brass knuckles and attempting to beat Roy senseless, and isn’t strange that his threats are doing the same thing to Roy that his collarbones did. 

No, Roy corrects, not strange— dangerous. Because while he was prepared for an Edward Elric that would try to tear him apart with an acerbic wit or his bare hands, depending upon the mood, he was not prepared for an Edward Elric that gave him a strange warm feeling in his chest and the slow stirrings of desire in the back of his throat. 

“Maybe you should be the prostitute.” Roy, through years and years of espionage and politics, manages to keep his voice level and face deadpan. 

“Hey!” Ed says. “What's that supposed to mean?” 

“Nothing,” Roy shrugs in the way he knows drives Ed crazy— the shrug that means ‘you’re not getting anything more out of me, so help me god.’ “Moot point. We don’t need a prostitute. We just need a disguise— something that will keep me from looking like an off-duty officer and keep you from looking like...” Roy pauses, searching for the word, before he realizes there isn’t one. “Well, it’ll keep you from looking like you.” 

“Oh?” Ed’s expression turns from murderous to intrigued. “And how do we do that?” 

Roy grins. “We wear suits.” 

The realization that Edward Elric is beautiful couldn’t have come at a worse time. Not only are they in the middle of a field mission, they’re about to walk into a bar together. Worst of all, Ed is in a suit. And it looks _good_. 

There are a lot of rumors about Roy, most of which he started himself. Earlier in his career, he and Riza had worked hard to circulate the notion that Roy Mustang wasn’t just a ladies’ man, he was a philanderer— a womanizer. It just made it that much easier for Chris’ ladies to slip him information. To be fair, he _has_ spent a lot of time around sex workers, but not in the way people think. It doesn’t quite count if they helped raise you, especially if your Aunt made sure that you never, ever, did anything untoward towards them. Which makes this whole situation more awkward, because Roy Mustang has never been given to staring at people lustfully, and that means that he is doing a very bad job of hiding it. 

He knows he’s been looking at Ed almost constantly, and he knows Ed knows, if the weird looks he keeps sending Roy are anything to go by. He would claim it’s not his fault that he’s doing it— that he was caught off guard and _perhaps_ it’s been a while and Ed is so dangerous and lithe and smart that he just can’t resist— but the truth is, he’s known a lot of dangerous and lithe and smart people in his life, and none of them have made him feel like this, so maybe it’s less of a matter of Ed being terrifying and beautiful and more of a matter of Ed being terrifying and beautiful and clever and smug and good and a host of other adjectives that Roy wishes he could make sound like insults. 

“Something wrong, General?” Ed’s tone is deceptively casual. He’s a few steps ahead of Roy, hands folded behind his head as he walks, and he’s not looking back. Roy is half-convinced Ed knows exactly what he’s doing. 

“Nothing,” Roy says, “I just didn’t realize that you owned anything other than black shirts and leather pants.” 

Ed grimaces. “Al makes me keep some nice clothes around just in case. He’s never going to let me hear the end of it once he learns that they’ve been useful.” 

Roy is suddenly extremely grateful towards Alphonse. 

“Why?” Ed asks. “Surprised I can pull it off?” 

Ed has always been excellent at making Roy say things without thinking. Those things have almost invariably been insults, of course, and he hasn’t ever regretted a single one of them. That might be about to change, because Roy’s first instinct to Ed’s cocky question is to respond “No, but I’d like to see if I can.” 

He catches himself just in time. It’s a close-run thing, though— too close. Next time he might not be able to catch himself. “No,” he says, knowing he sounds a bit more flustered than he’d like. “It’s just... odd.” 

“Mmmhmm,” Ed turns his head just enough to catch Roy’s expression in his peripheral vision. Roy swears he sees a look of satisfaction flash across Ed’s face. “I’m full of surprises.” 

The second they finish this mission up, Roy is going to take a very cold shower, call Riza and admit that she was right so she’ll talk to him, and tell her that Edward Elric is a cruel, beautiful, monster. 

Ed, thankfully, spares Roy the pain of figuring out normal replies for the rest of the walk. He does, however, keep throwing Roy uncharacteristically analytical sidelong glances as they walk. Roy will gladly take it over the alternative, regardless of how disconcerting it is to see Edward Elric not only thinking about other people, but actively trying to figure out what they’re thinking. 

Thatchpoole isn’t tiny, but it’s small enough that its downtown area is only a few blocks wide. The bar is on the edge of downtown, right where the guy Roy asked said it was. It’s a narrow building, crammed between a warehouse and an apartment building. It doesn’t look like the sort of place rich, morally-bankrupt alchemists go to drink. Roy narrows his eyes. This case just keeps getting weirder and weirder. 

He hears snickering coming from beside him and follows Ed’s line of sight to the name of the bar, mounted in bronze letters. ‘The Rainy Day’. The universe just loves mocking him. 

“What,” Roy throws a sidelong glance at Ed, “no clever comment about how useless I’m going to be?” 

Ed shrugs, still snickering. “I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings.” 

Roy refrains from making a sardonic comment about how Ed has never bothered to keep from hurting his feelings before. Two comments left unsaid in one night, Roy realizes. It must be some kind of record for him. He opens the door. 

The inside looks like your typical seedy bar, the kind Roy likes to drink at when he’s had a bad day and is kind of in the mood for someone to steal his wallet and see what happens. Lamps turned down low, scuffed floor— it doesn’t seem any nicer on the inside than the outside. 

As the door swings shut behind them, a few of the patrons look up. Roy breathes out a sigh of relief as he scans the clientele; they’re all dressed within some degree of business casual. He had been right— it’s not just a bar, it’s somewhere people come to deal discreetly, which means that he and Ed blend right in. 

Roy spots a man in shining silver suit sitting at the bar. Beside him, is a very serious looking man in a nondescript grey coat. Beside Roy, Ed seems to have spotted the same thing. They meet eyes, nod, then make their way to the bar and sit only a few seats down from the man in the silver suit, far enough to be inconspicuous, near enough to listen in. 

Ed orders a whiskey. Roy orders a beer. (He hates the stuff— he drinks, he likes to drink— but he needs to keep a clear head.) Then they settle down to listen. 

“...waiting...” the nondescript man is saying, “...not happy that it’s taking so long.” 

The man in the silver suit practically growls in response, his words a bit louder than he intended. “It takes longer than you think. Tell your boss to give us some more time.” 

“...already coming...” the nondescript man leans in closer. “...show him...” 

The man in the silver suit’s eyes go wide. “No!” He looks around nervously, hoping no one heard him. 

Roy and Ed pretend to be very engaged in drinking silently. 

The man in the silver suit relaxes once he sees that no one is watching. “We’ve run out of graphite again,” he says, voice still loud enough for Roy and Ed to hear. “We have to get it from the mines at night and we can’t let the townspeople carry it unless you want them to see the whole thing. There’s no way we can get it there in time without people noticing.” 

“...discretionary fund... pay someone...” The nondescript man gets up, leans in very close, and whispers something that makes the other man shiver. 

Roy bites back a smirk. There’s his in. 

He waits until the man has left the bar, whispers “Stay here.” to Ed, and slides a couple seats down the bar. 

“Rough night?” Roy asks. 

The man in the silver suit eyes him suspiciously. “What’s it to you?” 

“Well,” Roy says, “I couldn’t help but notice that you seem to be in a tough situation. As it happens, me and my partner,” he jerks his thumb at Ed, who is doing a wonderful job of seeming to be a lot less bright (in both senses of the word) than he really is, “tend to specialize in those sorts of situations. And we’re looking for work.” 

_Come on_ , Roy hopes, _be desperate enough to fall for it._

“And where’d you say you were from?” The man in the silver suit is intrigued, at least, even if he’s still suspicious. Good. Roy can use that suspicion. 

“All due respect,” he says, letting a bit of a smug smirk make its way onto his face, “but that’s something it might be better for both of us to avoid talking about.” 

“Hm,” the man grumbles. “So, you walk in here, listen to my private conversation, ask me for a job, and then refuse to tell me anything about yourselves?” 

Roy cocks his head. “I didn’t get the feeling that you had much leeway with your choice of employees at this point. Look,” he says, spreading his hands out. “Me and my partner were planning to move on in the next few days. Take us up on our offer or don’t, it doesn’t matter. I’m just offering a mutually beneficial arrangement.” 

The man in the silver suit grunts. “What can you do?” 

“Whatever you need.” 

The man snorts derisively. “I highly doubt that. My line of work necessitates a certain caliber of employee.” 

“Call us contractors, then.” Roy shrugs. “So long as we get paid.” 

“And what does your buddy over there have to say about this?” The man nods to Ed, who is draining the last of the whiskey from the glass and managing to look uncharacteristically shifty. 

Roy smirks. “He’ll do whatever I say.” 

“Fine,” the man says. “Then you have yourself a deal. Be at the third house from the end on the right on the road to Lydfax at two AM tonight.” 

Roy raises an eyebrow. “Our payment?” 

The man digs into his pocket and pulls out a 100,00 cenz bill. Roy reaches for it, but the man pulls it out of his grasp. “You can get this when you show up. You’ll get the other half after you’re done.” 

Roy pretends to eye him warily, eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Fine.” He leaves his beer on the bar counter, only half empty. “I guess I’ll go find something else to occupy me until then.” 

“Don’t keep me waiting.” 

Roy nods before turning around and tapping Ed on the shoulder and motioning for him to come with. 

“So,” Ed says once they’re back on the dirt road to Lydfax. “I’m impressed. I didn’t think it was possible for your sleaziness to actually work.” 

Roy looks at him, bemused. “How much of that did you hear?” 

Ed grins. “About half, but I’m used to reading you.” 

Roy opens his mouth to interrupt, but Ed cuts him off. 

“And before you ask, yes, I know that some of it’s an act, I’m not stupid. But no one is that good of an actor.” 

“At least you’re not accusing me of being completely awful.” Roy sticks his hands in his pockets casually. “Small miracles.” 

Ed snorts. “I’ve gained some perspective.” 

Roy raises his eyebrows. “And when did that happen? Because I’ve yet to see it.” 

Edward is silent for a moment and Roy is worried until he looks over and sees him smiling. 

“Trying to bait me, General?” He sends Roy a smug smile. “That’s not very mature of you.” 

Roy rolls his eyes. “Trying to insult my rank, Elric? Because you’ll never be able to top your old insubordination.” 

“Well, yes, I suppose you’re right,” Ed says, looking down at the ground. “But I’m doing a pretty damn good job considering I don’t actually work for you.” 

“Always trying to push the limits of what’s possible, aren’t you?” 

Ed grins wryly. “You know it.” 

“Yes,” Roy says, recalling the innumerable amount of headaches Ed’s “pushing the limits” had given him. “Unfortunately, I do.” There’s no bite behind the words, really, and he knows Edward can tell. 

It’s odd how peaceful it is, walking with him and teasing him, despite the fact that they’re lying about their identities and purposefully getting themselves in to risky situations. Ed has this strange, calming, confidence that Roy noticed years ago. It rolls off him in waves and affects everyone around him. It’s not the surety that he can win— that's just foolishness, and Roy has seen enough of that to last him a lifetime— it's the surety that he will fight. 

The hardest part of living the way Roy does is the constant decisions, the constant calculations, the constant desire to give in and let himself relax for a second. He hasn’t let himself slip since the Promised Day when he’d gone after Envy. He wants to make sure he never will again. 

But for some reason, Ed soothes that. Roy is so afraid that he’ll stop fighting if he lets go, even for a second, that he never lets himself relax. Maybe it’s easier to trust himself around Ed because he knows he can trust Ed to check him if he starts going wrong. Maybe it’s that it’s easier to do the right thing when you have someone modeling it in front of you. Maybe it’s just that Ed believes in people— believes in himself— in a way that Roy never has, and that constant faith backing him up is a reassurance that he can’t give himself. 

“Something wrong, Mustang?” Ed asks, looking genuinely concerned. 

Roy looks at Ed— at the way he slumps just a little, and how there’s a small wrinkle at the corner of his mouth because of his frown, and the flyaways that inevitably escape from Ed’s classic undercover ponytail. 

“Just lost in thought,” Roy finally says. 

“Is it Hawkeye?” Ed asks, and a guilty jolt goes through Roy’s stomach. 

“No— well, it wasn’t until you brought it up,” Roy says. 

“What _happened_ between you two?” Ed stares straight ahead, and his voice is perfectly level in the way that Roy knows means that he’s keeping his emotions in check. 

“Nothing,” Roy says. 

“Somehow, I doubt that.” Ed’s carefully level tone has had a touch of annoyance creep in. 

“Fine,” Roy says, and maybe he’s a bit pissed, but that’s because he’s been trying not to think about it and not to forget about it for weeks, and then Edward Elric waltzes in and starts asking awkward questions and confusing the hell out of him, and he just wants Ed to shut up and let him get back to enjoying the night. “Do you want to know what happened? I burned her.” 

“What?” Ed stops and turns around. 

Roy stops as well and looks at the ground. “There was an assassination attempt. I got three of them, and when I turned around, she was pinned down. She told me not to do anything but I saw him about to pull the trigger, and as she took him down, I sent an ignition blast. It was messy, and careless, and she was stuck in the hospital with most of her left side burned for three weeks because of me.” Roy stares very intently at a dead leaf on the side of the road. “And you know what she told me? That it was an accident. That things happen.” 

“She’s right,” Ed says. “It’s horrible and fucked up, but she’s right.” 

Roy wants to laugh. “You too? Didn’t you hear me? I fucked up. I fucked up and didn’t trust her and I got her seriously hurt.” 

It had been terrible. Roy knows what flesh looks like when it burns. He knows what bones look like when they char. He even knows what Riza’s skin looks like when it blisters in just the right way to obscure her back tattoo. But those, at least, however horrible and evil and irredeemable they were, were intentional. Watching Riza’s skin turn bright red, watching her grit her teeth and bear it so that he wouldn’t hear her scream, seeing her arm and torso and neck covered in bandages because of him— because of a stupid choice he made— that’s almost worse. He’s experienced some horrible things in his lifetime and he’s been responsible, in some way or another, for all of them, but the one thing he’s never been is careless. And now he has been, and he will never make a mistake like that again. 

“Trust me,” Ed says. “I know all about fucking up and getting the person you love more than anything hurt. But she’s right. You can’t be so terrified of making another mistake like that that you won’t ever take a risk again.” He pauses. “But you haven’t explained why she wouldn’t let you work.” 

“After she was stable and the doctors said she’d recover fully, I didn’t sleep for weeks. I stayed at my desk all day and started drafting laws that I never finished and going to meetings that I didn’t even remember after they finished. I couldn’t get a single thing done.” Roy pauses. “The day she was released, she came to see me. She still hadn’t been cleared for work, but she wanted to prove to me that she was okay. She walked in and— and I started crying. And I didn’t stop. She tried to tell me that it was fine, now— that she was fine and I didn’t need to worry about her. She walked me home and I didn’t sleep and the next morning she called me to say that I should take a week off and that it wasn’t negotiable.” 

Roy doesn’t dare look up; he doesn’t want to see whatever mix of pity and horror is on Ed’s face. Maybe that makes him more of a coward. It’s not like it matters if another mark is added to the long list of things he’s done wrong. 

Ed steps closer to him, until Roy can see the tips of Ed’s shoes next to his. 

“Mustang.” 

Roy doesn’t look up. 

“Mustang!” And now Ed’s voice is angry. 

Roy’s head jerks up in surprise. Ed is glaring at him, eyes glowing and furious. 

“You’re being an idiot.” 

“What?” Roy reels back, confused. 

“You’re being an idiot,” Edward repeats. “What exactly are you hoping to accomplish by feeling guilty?” 

“Not making the same mistake again,” Roy says, barely keeping the anger in his voice under control. “Not all of us are as confident in our ability to keep ourselves on the straight and narrow as you are.” 

Edward crosses his arms and squares his shoulders. “If you’re expecting me to believe that you think you’ll hurt Hawkeye if you don’t punish yourself endlessly for a mistake, then you really are as stupid as you look. What you did was make a mistake. No matter how much you punish yourself, you can’t keep from making mistakes.” 

“It wasn’t just a mistake,” Roy’s fists are clenched in anger. “It was negligence and I got her hurt. If I had just payed more attention to what she was doing— if I had just trusted her—” 

“You don’t know what would have happened.” Ed exhales sharply. “You made a decision in the heat of the moment. It might have been the wrong one. You got someone you love hurt, and you want to punish yourself for it.” Ed looks directly at Roy. “You’re being an idiot. You don’t deserve this.” 

Roy slowly feels his hands unclench. He wants to believe Ed— wants to give himself the leeway to understand that it was a mistake and that mistakes happen. 

“What if I make the same mistake again?” Roy looks at his palms. They’re pale from wearing gloves all the time— pale with only a few scars. They don’t look like hands that should be able to cause mass amounts of damage, but he’s known for a long time that something’s looks have nothing to do with its potential. 

“You won’t,” Edward says. “Not punishing yourself over it doesn’t mean you’ll forget it. Don’t get me wrong,” he looks away, “you’ll probably make a different mistake that gets someone hurt. But,” Ed looks at Roy, eyes strangely luminescent in the shadows of the trees. “you won’t make the same one twice.” 

Roy lets his arms drop to his sides limply and stares up at the moon. It’s a little over a quarter of the way through its cycle— a waxing gibbous. 

For some reason, Roy wants to laugh. “I never thought it would be you to talk sense in to me.” 

Ed shrugs, his eyes losing their strange, furious glow, his shoulders returning to their usual slouch. “I’ve done it before, haven’t I?” 

“Yes,” Roy breathes. “Yes, you have.” 

Roy knows how hormones work— how volatile anger is, how quickly it can turn to relief, and how quickly relief can let the endorphins sweeping through your body make you do stupid, reckless things. He knows this, and he still wants to kiss Ed. If he cared more, he might start listing all the reasons he shouldn’t, starting with ‘he’s almost fifteen years your junior’ and ‘you only figured out you wanted to kiss him a few hours ago’. If he cared more, he might start listing all the reasons those reasons are wrong, things like ‘he’s an adult, so what if he’s younger’ and ‘you’ve made stupid mistakes before, but this isn’t the stupidest’. If he cared more, he might even start listing all the reasons he _should_ kiss him: that Ed knows him— knows who he is, what he wants, and what he’s done; that Ed is smart enough to figure out that anything between the two of them is going to be at least a little messy; that if Ed kisses him back, Roy can be sure that Ed is doing it because he wants to, not because he wants something else from Roy. 

Instead of doing any of that, he looks at Ed, who is sometimes glowing and glorious but mostly an annoying asshole, and is still somehow one of the kindest people he’s ever met. He looks at Ed and Ed looks back at him and Roy Mustang does one of the stupidest things of his life. 

He kisses Ed.


	2. Chapter 2

Roy Mustang is kissing Edward Elric in the middle of a dirt road that leads to a tiny mining town where they’re conducting an investigation in to the mass creation of artificial bodies, and somehow the weirdest part of that sentence is the bit where Roy Mustang is actually kissing Edward Elric. 

And it’s good. It’s _really_ good. 

Ed’s lips are soft under his and he’s kissing Roy back ferociously like Roy is the air he needs to breathe, and Roy’s hand is tangled in Ed’s ponytail and his other hand is cupping Ed’s cheek, and Ed’s hands are around Roy’s neck and waist, pulling him closer and closer until they’re pressed up against each other with nowhere to hide. And they’re kissing and kissing until both of them are pulling back to breathe and Roy can feel Ed’s hands on him and Ed’s lips are parted just in the slightest and he looks utterly dumbstruck. 

“So,” Ed says, moving his hand from Roy’s neck to touch where Roy’s hand touched his cheek. “that was unexpected.” 

Roy laughs. “Yes,” he says. “it was.” 

“Any regrets?” Ed asks. 

“None.” 

“Just checking,” Ed says, and then he’s kissing Roy again and Roy is kissing him back and it’s just as incredible the second time. 

Ed’s ponytail is a bit rough under Roy’s hand, a testament to an utter disdain for conditioner, and his hand is calloused where it’s wrapped around Roy’s neck, and his mouth is soft and his collarbone is sharp where Roy’s thumb brushes it and the entire thing is so very _Ed_ that it makes Roy want to laugh with giddy joy. 

“You’re smiling,” Ed says as he pulls away, breathless, “why are you smiling?” 

“Would you accept ‘I don’t know’ as an answer?” Roy asks, not removing his hands. 

“Hm,” Ed says. “Fine. For now.” His words are belied by the fact that he too is breathless and smiling. “We should talk about this.” 

“Yes,” Roy agrees, and kisses Ed again. 

When they finally break apart, they stumble over to the side of the road, neither willing to forsake contact with the other completely. They’re both still breathless and smiling as they collapse against a tree on the side of the road, sides pressed together. 

“So,” Ed says, “I should probably start calling you Roy now.” 

Roy snorts. “I’m surprised you haven’t already, what with your general apathy towards rank and the military.” 

Ed shrugs. “Maybe I was trying to maintain distance with you.” 

“And by ‘maybe’ you mean...” 

“Absolutely.” Ed smiles brightly at Roy. “It seemed inappropriate to try and seduce a General that used to be my CO. Hence the boundary.” 

“Yeah,” Roy says, “that seems like it was really effective.” 

“I’m not the one who kissed you first,” Ed points out. “I think I can make a reasonable case for it being you who seduced me.” 

Roy rolls his eyes. “As if you had no idea what you were doing.” 

“Hey,” Ed says, lifting his hands up in surrender, “I just started flirting with you a few hours ago. Whatever else convinced you to kiss me was not my fault.” 

“Well I think I can make a reasonable case for your entire personality being your fault,” Roy says. 

“Aw,” Ed replies. “How cute. You like me for my entire personality.” 

Roy frowns. “I meant the tiny percentage of your personality that doesn’t annoy me.” 

“Can’t take it back now.” Edward smirks. “You admitted that you like me being annoying.” 

“I am definitely going to regret that later.” Roy gives a long-suffering sigh. 

Ed grins. “I’ll make sure you do.” 

Roy can’t bring himself to be scared by the prospect, so he just grins and rests his head against Ed’s. 

“So you and Hawkeye never...?” Ed asks. 

“No,” Roy shakes his head. “It’s never been like that. I love her, but I’m not in love with her. If I were more sentimental, I might say that she’s like the other half of my soul— of myself.” 

“You just said it,” Ed points out because he loves being a nuisance. 

Roy rolls his eyes. “Fine, then. Riza is half my soul and half myself. Satisfied?” 

“It was a little sentimental,” Ed says, “but I think I can handle it.” 

Roy snorts. “It’s like— well, I hesitate to compare our relationship to yours and Alphonse’s, as you two were literally bonded together by your souls— but I feel like she is my other half the way Alphonse is yours. She balances me out. I wouldn’t be here without her.” 

Ed hums in understanding. “Alright, I get what you’re saying, though I’m still half-convinced you and Hawkeye are in love with each other.” 

Roy grins fondly. “It was her idea to start those rumors, actually. Not that they really needed starting, of course, but it never hurts to encourage them. She’s always found it helps for people to assume she got where she is because of special favors. It makes it easier for her to pull a gun on them when she needs to.” 

“She’s terrifying,” Ed says, not without a bit of fondness. 

“Yes,” Roy agrees in the same tone, “She is.” 

Roy breathes in deeply and appreciates the warmth of the summer air and scent of the forest mixed with the scent of the oil Ed uses on his automail and his soap. 

“I hope you’ll forgive me questioning you over this,” Roy says, “but how serious are your feelings?” 

Ed snorts. “You mean, what are my intentions towards you?” He pauses, thinking. “I know how I feel; I like you. I like being around you. I want to be around you more.” He looks towards Roy. “And you? What do you want from me?” 

“Well,” Roy says, “I only figured out that I wanted to kiss you a few hours ago.” 

Ed snorts. “And they call you observant. I had that figured out two days ago.” 

“I can’t believe I kissed you,” Roy says, faking a long-suffering sigh. 

“Can’t take it back now.” Ed gives him a shit-eating grin. 

Roy bites back a smile. “In any case, you asked me what my intentions were? Mostly to spend time with you, regardless of how annoying you can be. I, unfortunately, have started liking you as a person.” 

“Well it’s good to know you’ll respect me in the morning,” Ed smirks. 

“Provided you don’t do anything catastrophically stupid.” 

“No promises,” Ed says. 

A smile plays at the corners of Roy’s lips. “I’ll take that risk.” 

“So,” Ed wonders, “where does that leave us?” 

Roy pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “I’m not sure how safe it would be for you if we were to attempt an actual relationship.” 

“Right,” Edward says, and Roy looks up to see him glaring at him, “I’m only not hurting you because I know you’re actually concerned about me, but if you ever try to reject me with some bullshit line about ‘my own safety’ or ‘the greater good’, I will punch you so hard you won’t be able to move for weeks and then go get Hawkeye so she can use you for target practice.” He frowns. “Look, if you don’t think these feelings will last long for you, or you think that it’ll get in the way of you becoming Führer, then I get it, just reject me, but if you’re stupid enough to think that you’re protecting me by saying ‘this can’t happen’, then I need to remind you that I have a kill on sight order out on me in Creta, am wanted for arson and destruction of property in Drachma, and my job is literally to find the most dangerous people in Amestris and then fight them.” 

“Point taken,” Roy says drily. 

“I’m not an idiot,” Ed continues. “I know all bets are off the second I become a liability for you and I know there’s a pretty decent chance you’ll lose interest the next time I decide to go running headfirst into danger and forget to write.” 

“So, next week.” 

Ed glares at him. “ _But_ , I’m willing to try so long as you are too.” 

“I could be amendable to that arrangement.” 

“ _Amenable_ ,” Ed mocks, grabbing Roy’s collar and pulling him close. “Fuck, you’re insufferable,” he says. Then he kisses Roy hard. 

Roy returns the favor enthusiastically. 

They show up at the house at two in the morning on the dot, having deposited everything that could mark them as anything other than con men looking for a quick job back at Edward’s hideout. It’s a bit strange how little has changed between him and Ed; they still cheerfully insulted each other all the way back to the cabin, Roy being annoying and Ed threatening to find his ignition gloves and change the array enough that they’re useless the next time he tries to use them. The only thing that’s different is that Roy is now intimately familiar with the Ed’s mouth. 

The house itself is almost completely dark, though the light reflected on the far bit of the lawn probably means there’s a room in the back with the window on. It’s one of the ones Roy didn’t search on the first day, but Ed drew the layout out for both of them and they have it memorized. 

Roy knocks on the door quietly and, as expected, the man was listening for them. He ushers them inside quickly. Beside him is another man in a dark green suit jacket with a plum waistcoat and a brownish-orange shirt. Roy can feel Edward trying not to laugh behind him. 

“Pat them down,” the first man says. 

Roy and Ed submit themselves to a pat-down. This is exactly why they’d gotten rid of their notebooks and Roy’s pocket watch in the first place. The man in the terrible outfit finds nothing but a pair of brass knuckles on Ed and two handguns on Roy. 

Ed shoots him a look questioning why he has _two_ , and Roy just shrugs. One for if he can’t do alchemy, and another for if the first one breaks. It makes sense to him, especially considering the fact that Hawkeye usually has at least twice that on her person. Riza even used to sleep with a gun under her pillow until she realized she accidentally kept turning off the safety in her sleep. 

Ed shoots him an unimpressed look, like he can tell what Roy is thinking and thinks it’s stupid. Roy is worried to realize that he finds it endearing rather than terrifying or annoying or any other of a host of negative adjectives that should apply to it. 

The man in silver lets Ed keep his brass knuckles and Roy keep his guns. They figured that would happen too. After all, showing up to an undisclosed job at two in the morning without any weapons would have been far more suspicious than showing up with some. 

“You’ll be transporting some materials for me,” the man in silver says. “Follow me.” 

He leads them further into the house and down some stairs. Roy counts two, three, four flights before they’re down at the bottom. 

The man stops in front of the gaping maw of a tunnel. “Go straight through here and don’t take any of the tunnels on the sides. There should be a few cubic meters of the stuff on the other end. There’ll be a man there watching you. Don’t try stiffing me.” 

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Roy says, holding out his hand. 

The man in silver frowns, then hands him the 100,000 cenz bill. “Come back here when you’re done. I’ll give you the rest.” 

Roy gives the man his fakest smile and turns on his heel. 

Finding the graphite is the easy part. Roy and Ed emerge from the tunnel to see the mines’ foreman waiting. Roy prays he won’t recognize them— prays that Ed somehow hadn’t managed to stick his nose in enough places it didn’t belong for the man to recognize him. He’s in luck; the mayor stares at them with no recognition in his eyes. 

The hard part is everything else. The man had said “a few cubic meters”. What he had meant was “a couple cubic meters, each split in to four parts”. Roy runs the numbers in his head, calculating the weight. They can each carry one and still keep a relatively quick time, but the tunnel is at least half a mile long if the maps Roy has seen of the area before. No wonder people had refused to do it. 

Roy and Ed look at each other, resign themselves to a near-sleepless night, and get to work. 

It’s past five am when they finish. They’re both covered in greasy grey smears, especially their hands which are so covered that they look almost like they’re carved from graphite. Ed looks dead on his feet, mouth tight and face blank. Roy knows he probably looks worse. At least Ed had gotten decent sleep for a while before this. 

They resist the urge to collapse on the floor and sleep for fifteen hours, instead choosing to stomp up the stairs a little harder than is polite. The man opens the door in a dressing gown, looks them up and down, and hands Roy another 100,000 cenz bill. 

“This is for your discretion.” His voice is rough from sleep and Roy can tell he’s keeping himself from yawning. 

Still, they haven’t gotten all the information they need, and Roy’ll be damned if he did all this work for nothing. 

“We’ll be in the neighborhood for a few more days,” Roy says, “if you need any more help.” 

The man looks at Roy skeptically. “You want to do this again?” 

“We’re tight on cash,” Roy says, and he doesn’t have to fake the frustration and exhaustion in his voice. 

“Hmpf.” The man looks at them closely. “We won’t be needing any more.” 

“You sure about that?” Roy asks. “You seemed pretty insistent earlier that you were going to take a while with whatever it is you’re doing.” 

“It’s not your place to ask questions.” 

Roy shrugs, pushing past him into the hallway and out the front door. “Have it your way.” 

He and Ed start walking towards Thatchpoole, where the alchemist assumes they’re staying. Roy doubts the man will bother watching them, but it’s not worth the risk. 

“I wish we’d gotten more out of that,” he mutters to Ed when they’re out of earshot. “At least a solid time or location. Damn.” 

Ed sighs. “At least we got the tunnel.” 

“Yeah,” Roy says, exhausted. “At least that.” 

The next morning (or afternoon, more accurately, but who’s counting) Roy wakes up with a sore back, still covered in graphite. He groans and forces himself to open his eyes. 

Ed, surprisingly, is already up. Maybe not so surprisingly, Roy thinks, considering Ed is fourteen years younger than he is and has probably slept more than a few hours a week for the last month. 

“Hey,” Ed says, looking up at him from where he’s got notebooks scattered around the table. “You look awful.” 

“I feel awful,” Roy says, but he forces himself to get up. He looks down at himself and grimaces. He’s still in his clothes from last night and they’re ruined. Oh well, one of the perks of being a General is that you have a big enough salary to be able to ruin clothes once in a while. 

Ed notices his grimace. “I can wash your clothes for you.” 

Roy blinks, noticing for the first time that Ed’s skin is completely free of the marks covering Roy. “How do you look so clean?” 

Ed shrugs. “I used the washbasin earlier to clean off. On second thought,” he says, giving Roy a once over. “Maybe you should abandon the clothes altogether.” 

Roy frowns at him, not sure if Ed is being judgmental or horny. 

Ed rolls his eyes. “It’s not like that, you pervert. You just look like you need it. Besides,” he says, “Al put in an array that lets you heat up the water.” 

The prospect of a hot bath is enough to wipe away any reservations Roy might have had. 

“I’ll fill it for you,” Ed offers, and Roy nods in thanks. Ed hops to it, grabbing the bucket from the well and filling it then dumping it into the basin over and over again, while Roy grabs himself some breakfast/lunch. 

It’s odd watching this older Edward Elric run around. He looks so much like his younger self, full of energy and curiosity, that Roy almost wants to call him Fullmetal. Then Ed turns and smiles at him in a wholly not-Fullmetal way and Roy realizes that Ed is Edward Elric is the Fullmetal Alchemist and maybe he should stop trying to draw distinctions between the versions of Ed that he’s seen and just accept that Edward Elric will probably always be energetic and curious and loving and a bit of an asshole regardless of how old he gets. 

“You’ll have to activate the array yourself,” Ed says, pointing to a small circle carved into the stone at the edge of where the basin is sunk into the ground. “It shouldn’t be hard, we just tweaked it from a classic.” 

Roy recognizes the array as one for boiling water and nods. It’s not hard to keep from making it too hot, especially since Ed and Al have somehow managed to put upper and lower restraints on the temperature. If Roy were a little less tired and sore, he might be inclined to ask Ed more about it. As it is, he resolves to ask later when his body isn’t aching all over 

Roy strips and sinks into the basin, sending his eternal thanks to Alphonse Elric for having the prescience to make it big enough for someone to fit in. He sinks fully under the water and stays there for a minute, enjoying the warmth and muffled sound. When his head emerges, Ed is giving him that same strange look that Roy hasn’t been able to decipher yet. Then he throws a bar of soap at Roy’s head. 

Roy catches it right before it hits him in the head. “Hey! That could have hit me in the face!” He doesn’t know why he bothers telling Ed when that was clearly the intent. 

Ed just frowns. “I was aiming for your shoulder.” 

Roy looks at him suspiciously, unsure if Ed is going to try throwing other various projectiles at him. “Why are you still out here?” 

“Morbid curiosity,” Ed says. 

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Roy asks flatly. 

Ed grins the way he does when he’s being a dick and knows it. “Looking for wrinkles.” 

Roy briefly contemplates throwing the soap at Ed before realizing that it’s his only bar. That’s fine. He’s creative. 

Roy claps his hands under the water and sends a ball of snow hurtling at Ed’s head. Ed barely dodges it, clearly not expecting the attack. 

“So, you’re planning to play dirty, huh?” Ed smirks. “I can work with that.” 

“Please don’t,” Roy says. “the whole point of this was for me to get clean.” 

Ed groans, forthcoming attack forgotten. “That was awful. I’d rather you just hit me with a snowball. Or an ice ball. Or anything that’ll concuss me enough to make me forget I heard that.” 

Roy grins and begins using the soap to get the worst of the graphite off of him. 

Ed stomps inside and comes back out again a moment later and Roy raises a questioning eyebrow at him. 

“Punishment,” Ed says, holding up their notebooks. “You’re going to help me recreate their transmutation circle.” 

Roy sighs. “Fine, but I’m not going to be much help. I didn’t get a good look at it.” 

Ed gives him a flat look. “Aside from me, Al, and our teacher, you’re probably one of the people who knows the most about human transmutation in the world, at least out of the people who aren’t actively trying to exploit it. Stop making excuses and help me.” 

Roy spreads his hands in surrender. He’ll try and help, even if Ed’s faith is a little misplaced. Roy Mustang is a damn good alchemist. At one point he might have been one of the best— if not _the_ best— in the country. But he, like any alchemist who isn’t batshit crazy, has a specialty. He’s willing to bet he can beat both Ed and Al when it comes to flame alchemy, but in anything else, he’s toast. He didn’t hold a candle to a twelve-year-old Edward Elric back then, and he certainly doesn’t compare to a twenty-three year old Edward Elric now. 

Roy leans over the edge to get a better look at the notes, inadvertently dripping water all over them. 

“Oi!” Ed grabs his hair and shoves his head back. “You’ll ruin my notes.” 

“And how exactly am I supposed to help if I can’t see the notes?” Roy points out quite reasonably. 

Ed goes inside and grabs a towel, handing it to him with an annoyed look on his face. “Just make sure your head is dry and don’t touch anything.” 

Roy acquiesces happily. 

When Edward deems him dry enough to not ruin all the notes, he allows Roy to lean over the edge to look at the notes he’s laid out on the ground. 

“I’ve got the basic framework of it figured out,” Ed says, “I’m just trying to figure out the details using the arrays you found on the walls. Most of them were incorporated in some way, I remember that much, I just can’t figure out the fusions.” He pauses. “I mean, I know how I’d do it with this framework, but I don’t think they’re on my level.” 

Apparently, Roy notes, Ed will always be arrogant as well. Not that he isn’t right. Roy doubts there are few people who could compete with Ed’s alchemical knowledge. The fact that Ed isn’t quite so humble as his brother (or most other people on the planet) should probably bother him more, but Roy has always had a thing for talented people and Ed is about as talented as they get. 

“...five sections, obviously, because they seem to be dividing it up in to cell components instead of types of tissues and fluids. I mean, it’s not bad, but they’ve gotten it pretty mixed...” Ed trails off, looking directly at Roy. “You haven’t heard a thing I’ve said.” 

Roy doesn’t bother denying it. “If I said it was because I was thinking about you, would that get me out of it?” 

Ed frowns at him, but Roy can see hints of mirth in his face. “I think you know it won’t.” 

Roy shrugs. “I tried. Now,” he stretches, enjoying the pleasant feeling of the muscles in his neck and back loosening, “can you repeat that last part?” 

He doesn’t reply. 

“Ed?” Roy looks up at him only to see Ed staring at the sweep of Roy’s chest as the water begins to cover it again. Ed realizes he’s been caught and goes a bit pink. 

“Finished?” Roy tries not to sound flattered. He knows he’s attractive— knows that Ed thinks he’s attractive— but there’s something about someone as beautiful and clever as Edward Elric lusting over him that targets his vanity in just the right way. 

Ed shakes his head to clear it. “For now.” 

Roy tries very hard not to think about what ‘for now’ entails and how the ‘later’ it implies might play out. 

“Anyways, like I was saying...” Ed starts, and Roy settles in to listen. 

It’s late afternoon and the bathwater is past tepid and nearing cold by the time Roy steps out. He and Ed had been so caught up in discussing some of the more complex theories behind combining arrays that they’d let the time pass them by. 

Before he can say anything, Ed brings him some clothes and then proceeds to stare openly at him as he dresses. 

“Do you have to watch?” Roy asks, not particularly annoyed by Ed’s scrutiny, but perhaps a little self-conscious. 

“No,” Ed says, grinning. 

Roy would like to say that it’s his endless patience and incredible empathy that has him from punching Edward for this long, but the truth is that he just likes him too much to mind the accompanying antics. 

Summers in northern Amestris have never been hot— not like the south or the east, where 32° is the average and 37° isn’t uncommon— but they’re not cold either. Still, there’s a chill in the air. Maybe it’s because Roy accidentally sat in cool water for too long, or maybe it’s because he wants to see if Ed will take his shirt off if it’s hot enough, but Roy lights the stack of wood in the fireplace with a clap of his hands. 

“How did you do that?” Ed looks up at him from where he’s been collecting the last of their food to make dinner. 

“Clapping,” Roy says by way of explanation. 

Ed looks at him, clearly trying to figure out exactly what Roy’s angle is, but he gets nothing. Roy bites back a smirk. At least Ed can’t read him all the time. 

“I meant,” Ed says, long-suffering, “since when have you been able to do flame alchemy without a circle?” 

“Oh,” Roy frowns. “A few years, I guess. I still prefer the control the array affords, but learning to do it without one was much to useful a skill to abandon.” He looks up at Edward, deadpan. “I’m a little insulted that you haven’t been keeping up with my accomplishments.” 

“Yeah, well,” Ed says, “the tabloids are always much more focused on your clothes than your alchemy, and the newspapers are bored with doing human interest pieces on you.” Ed looks, up, noticing the weird look Roy is giving him. 

“I was kidding,” Roy says. “I didn’t think you’d actually keep tabs on me.” 

“It’s not like I fucking stalked you, or something,” Ed says, rolling his eyes. “I just wanted to see if General Armstrong had killed you yet.” 

Roy snorts. “Fair enough.” 

“What’s the plan now?” Ed asks, pouring the last of their cooking oil in to the pan. 

Roy looks up in surprise. “Why are you asking me? I‘m just your backup.” 

Ed gives him a flat look. “And I’m just here to look pretty. Don’t pretend to be stupid; it doesn’t suit you. You know you’re better at this sort of thing than I am.” 

“I just have more experience,” Roy points out. 

“Right,” Ed says, “better.” 

Roy shrugs. 

“So,” Ed says. “I repeat: what’s the plan now?” 

Roy frowns. “I’m just thinking out loud, but arresting anyone at this point seems like a bad move. Someone here has got to be former military. Arresting the other alchemists for breaking the Alchemical Ethics Code will just mean that whoever is behind this will move on to somewhere else, and we still won’t have any idea what they’re planning to do with their synthesized bodies once they’ve got the array right.” He massages his temples with one hand. “On the other hand, it’s possible that we won’t get any more information by investigation alone, and arresting some of the alchemists could get them to talk. The longer we wait, the greater the chance of them figuring out the array. If someone _is_ former military, then they might be in possession of a philosophers stone and we could be facing an immortal legion situation if they get it right.” He looks at Ed. “It’s your mission. You have to be the one to make the call.” 

Ed grimaces. “Great. What’s the point of seducing a politician if they can’t even make the tough decisions for you?” His eyes are far away, the way they are when he’s thinking really hard about something. “I think we have to stay. If the person behind this gets away then there’s an even greater chance of them succeeding at whatever they’re doing, since we won’t be there to stop them. At least we know they’ll be here tomorrow night.” 

“Alright,” Roy says. “I’m behind you.” 

“You better be.” Ed grins. “So, what’s our next move?” 

“The tunnels,” Roy says without hesitation. “They created them. I noticed transmutation marks along the walls.” 

“And the floor and the ceiling,” Ed adds. “Those guys are sloppy.” 

“Right,” Roy says, trying to ignore the rush of fondness that comes when Ed starts criticizing other people’s alchemy. “We need to know where those other ones lead. With any luck, we’ll find out where they’re having their ‘party’ and find a place we can observe from until their benefactor gets there.” 

“I’ve been thinking,” Ed says. “Who’s to say they’re not going to use that basement? And how are you so sure that their boss is coming?” 

“As to the latter, I heard that he was coming within the next few days. It makes sense that he would be there. As to the former,” Roy says, “it’s just a guess, but it seems like they were just using that site for experimentation. I doubt they’ll want to show him their mistakes.” 

“Hm,” Ed nods, plunking the pan straight down on the table and shoves a fork and plate at Roy. 

The fire is crackling and Roy is in his underclothes as they sit and eat dinner together. It’s oddly domestic, even considering the fact that they’re discussing their strategy for taking down a ring of rogue alchemists. Not that Roy has ever had an idea of what normal domesticity looks like—not beyond when he used to watch Maes with Gracia and Elicia— but if this is it, then he might finally understand why some people crave it so much. 

“We just have to find a way in without being spotted,” Ed says after he’s finished shoveling food into his mouth at a rate that doesn’t quite rival his fifteen-year-old self, but does rival most of the Amestrian population. “And I’m willing to bet that they don’t guard any of their entrances, which means that we have a way in through the mine.” 

“Tonight.” Roy says. It’s not a question. 

Ed nods. “Seems like our best shot. I didn’t notice anyone down their last night, at least, and you’re certainly well rested enough for it.” 

“I didn’t sleep for _that_ long,” Roy protests. “Just a little over eight hours.” 

“Mmmhmm,” Ed says, because he’s nothing if not a smug bastard. “I guess you’re getting old, Roy. Can’t keep up with the new generation any longer.” 

“I’m not even fifteen years older than you,” Roy complains. “I can keep up with you plenty.” 

“Oh?” 

The mood has changed in half a second. Roy watches Ed’s gaze drift down from his face to the rest of his body, then back up again. Then Ed is pulling him off the stool, pushing him down on the blanket, and straddling him, hair gold and red with the reflection of the fire. Roy reaches up to tangle his hand in Ed’s hair, and then, because he wants to and he can, pulls Ed down to meet him until their lips are half a centimeter apart. 

“Trying to prove something about your self-control?” Ed challenges, not moving the half centimeter to close the gap. 

“No,” Roy says, “trying to prove something about yours.” 

Ed may be the most stubborn person Roy has ever met, but he can work with that. He has no compunction about fighting dirty. 

The hand that’s not tangled in Ed’s hair reaches up and cups his jaw. Then, slowly, ever so slowly, he lets it drift down across Ed’s chest. His hand reaches Ed’s waist and he lets his thumb rest right below the hipbone. The rest of his hand curls around Ed’s hip, and he can see and feel the shiver that goes through Ed as it does. 

Ed doesn’t break though, just watches Roy, pupils blown in his golden eyes. 

“Nice try,” Ed says, and Roy bites back a smirk, because it looks like Edward Elric is about to play dirty as well. He can _definitely_ work with that. 

Ed is on top of Roy, inches away from him at all points except one, where their hips meet. One arm supports him, elbow resting right next to Roy’s head. His other hand slowly and deliberately reaches under the hem of Roy’s undershirt and skims the waistband of Roy’s pants. Then he looks up at Edward, who is staring at him like he’s the only thing in the world, and he breaks. 

It’s been less than twenty-four hours since he last kissed Ed. He’s not sentimental enough to claim that he’s missed it already, but he’s honest enough to admit that he could. And it’s not just that Ed is a really, really, good kisser— because he is— it’s the knowledge that it’s Edward Elric who is kissing him, and he really, really, likes Edward Elric. 

Ed is breathing heavily as he pulls away, mouth red and gorgeous, a picture of beauty. Ed could be an angel, Roy thinks, if angels were rude, judgmental, and too clever for their own good. 

Roy says this out loud and Ed laughs and kisses him and Roy resolves to say more ridiculous things so long as they get the same reaction. 

Ed pulls away again, to breathe, maybe, though he seems to mostly just be looking at Roy. Roy takes the opportunity to look at Ed, too, whose face is cast in shadow and whose eyes are still bright. 

Roy swears. “Tunnels,” he says, surprised at how rough his voice is. “We were going to explore the tunnels.” 

Ed lets loose a string of curse words that is more creative than anything Roy ever expected to experience, both in the order, linking, and general diction. “I’m beginning to regret not just seducing you in Central.” 

“Wouldn’t have worked,” Roy says. “I was hungover. I don’t sleep with people when I’m hungover.” 

Ed frowns. “You underestimate my stubbornness.” 

Roy snorts. “I most certainly do not. You underestimate how irritable I can be.” 

“Can’t be worse than that time Al and I blew up a bridge and flooded half a town.” 

“You may have a point there,” Roy says darkly. “I was doing paperwork for that for months afterwards. And you two didn’t even have the decency to go clean up your mess. And I know you could have, because I’ve seen you fix more than that before. No, you just had to go traipsing off into the countryside leaving me—” 

“Roy,” Ed places his hand against the left side of Roy’s face and gently caressing his cheek with his thumb, the gentleness of the gesture belied by the fact that Ed is clearly taking a savagely gleeful pleasure from the knowledge that he annoyed Roy for months. “That was ten years ago. You might want to let it go.” 

Roy frowns and mutters something unintelligible that may or may not be something like “it took years off my life for fuck’s sake I’m damn well entitled to complain about it, fucking insubordinate cocky brat.” 

Ed bites back a smirk. “Glad to see we had such an impact on your life. Even if we did take years off it.” 

Roy softens, his lips curling upward with mischief. “Don’t take that as encouragement to do more damage. I have few enough years left already.” 

Ed rolls his eyes. “This again? I thought you were _more_ than capable of keeping up with me.” 

“I intend to prove that,” Roy says. “later. We, unfortunately, have a job to do.” 

They get into the tunnels from the mines. It’s a short walk across town, but there’s only one road and they stick to the shadows. People in Lydfax tend to shut down around nine, but the bars stay open until ten thirty and neither Roy nor Ed have any intention of being seen. 

The entrance to the tunnel is exactly where it was the night before, the only addition being a very messily transmuted stone cover. 

“Sloppy,” Ed mutters, shaking his head. 

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Roy says, keeping his voice low. “What exactly is your problem with messy transmutations?” 

Ed gives him a derisive look, like it should be obvious. “It’s not that hard to transmute stone, especially when it’s something this small and you have time to do it right.” He looks down, “The hills around here are limestone, right? And they’re pretty old, so they’ve definitely eroded enough to be a significant part of the soil around here. What’s so hard about just separating the calcium carbonate from organic matter?” He huffs. “I mean, look, they’ve just tried to bond clay together to make slate. Which, sure, fine if you can do it efficiently, but clearly these people don’t think small enough; they’re just bonding the molecules because they think it’s easier to do it that way instead of building it properly from the atomic level. It’s the same problem they’re having with that array. They’re taking arrays for molecules and then shoving the two arrays together where they think they should fit. They should be building the array to compose the macromolecular structures all at once instead of synthesizing one, then another, then trying to bind them. It’s leaving too much room for error.” 

“So your problem with messy transmutations is that... the people doing them are uninformed?” Roy looks at him faintly. “I shudder to think what you’ll do to me if I make a mistake transmuting in front of you.” 

Ed rolls his eyes. “You’re not this stupid. Or this single-minded.” 

“My focus is flame,” Roy argues. “That’s pretty single minded.” 

“Sure,” Ed says, “but I doubt you’d decide you need to make a piece of paper and ignore the wood right in front of you.” 

Roy snorts. “I don’t think they’re that stupid.” 

“I do,” Ed says. 

“Yes.” Roy rolls his eyes. “You’ve made that abundantly clear.” 

Roy reaches down to shove the lid of the top of the hole, but Ed beats him to it. 

“Age before beauty.” Ed smirks 

Roy raises an eyebrow, declining the makeshift ladder in the wall of the tunnel made of indented stone in favor of jumping down and landing lightly on his toes. “Pearls before swine.” 

Ed jumps down as well, grabbing a lantern from the pile of abandoned ones at the foot of the ladder. He holds it up and Roy lights it for him before pulling the (sloppy) slate cover back over the entrance to the tunnel. 

Ed and Roy turn, looking down the passageway where the light dims. 

“Into the belly of the beast.” Roy’s lips are pressed together, hands out of his pockets and at his sides just in case. Even if they run in to someone, he doubts it’ll be a problem, but old habits die hard and Roy Mustang is not going to die young because of a stupid mistake. 

Ed snorts. “You’re so fuckin’ dramatic.” 

Roy gives Ed a significant sidelong glance. “This from the man that put gargoyles on the front of Eastern Command.” 

“I was fourteen,” Ed complains, sticking his hands in his pocket. “Besides, gargoyles are cool.” 

Roy has spent his entire adult life practicing reacting to any possible situation. He has a reply for everything— a plan for everything— but sometimes life throws him a hand grenade that says ridiculous things that he has no idea how to respond to. That hand grenade is Edward Elric, and it’s worrying how much he seems to have missed being thrown off his rhythm. 

Ed is watching him out of the corner of his eye, half a smirk already on his face as he waits for Roy’s glib reply. Roy, wisely, decides to shut his mouth and keep moving. 

The first side passage is a hundred meters from the place they entered, just on the right. Roy holds out an arm to stop Ed before he goes waltzing in. He needs time to think. Some part of Roy is telling him that it’s best if they split up and look for clues, but a larger, possibly smarter but probably just more paranoid part of Roy thinks they should stick together. He and Ed are quieter from then on, wincing at every echo of their footfalls against stone. 

They reach the end of the passage rather abruptly. Unlike the main tunnel, this one curves and turns corners and very nearly doubles back on itself. At one point, Roy sees Ed mouthing ‘what the actual fuck’ at him. Roy shrugs in response. Who is he to question the ways of arrogant second-rate alchemists and their architectural designs? It’s not exactly impossible that the tunnel is weird for a reason, but Roy has seen their quality of work. He’s willing to bet his favorite suit jacket that the person making it had no clue what they were doing and no clue where they were going. 

Ed and Roy turn a corner and nearly run straight in to the wall. Like the one from the alchemist in silver’s place, this one has stairs. 

Roy holds up a hand, and Edward stops moving and stands perfectly still. They both listen for a long moment, ears straining to hear any sounds from above, but everything is perfectly silent. 

Roy, because he’s the one not holding the lantern and also the one with the long-range advantage, opens the double wooden doors that look like they belong more as the entrance to a cellar than to a secret tunnel. He peers out, double checking for any movement. There isn’t any, so he walks out and motions for Ed to follow him, leaving the lantern on the ground in the passage. 

They emerge into something that looks like a cross between a smoking salon and an astrologist’s reading room. The floors are covered in rich, imported carpets, the sofas are upholstered with embroidered silk, and the walls are covered in tapestries. In the middle of the room are a cluster of desks, covered with paper, protractors and compasses. There isn’t an exit aside from the tunnel. Roy frowns. 

Ed walks over to the desks, scoffing first at the compasses and protractors and then at the incomplete arrays. 

“You’d think,” he mutters to Roy, who has followed him over, “they’d have learned how to draw a basic circle by now.” 

“If you think that’s bad, you should see some of the military’s research alchemists now,” Roy responds quietly. “I know Amestris has specialized in weaponizing alchemy and we’re asking them to make arrays for farming, but their freehand circles look more like misshapen octagons and they have trouble with basic directional symbology. It’s ridiculous.” 

Ed looks up at Roy from where he’s bent over a desk, looking at a half-finished array, a smirk touching the corners of his mouth. “If it’s that bad, I don’t think I want to see.” 

“Probably not,” Roy says, “though god knows they could use the help.” 

“Catch me when I’m feeling altruistic and maybe I’ll take you up on that.” Ed circles the desks, scanning some of the other arrays. “I’m headed back to Central after this anyways. Might be fun to go criticize some idiots’ research for an afternoon.” 

Roy raises his eyebrows. “I never took you for an optimist.” 

“Nah,” Ed says, moving on to investigating the walls, “I’ve just finally realized that I really enjoy being a smartass.” 

“It took you this long?” Roy mutters under his breath, though he’s more amused than annoyed. 

Ed, thankfully, doesn’t hear. 

As Ed investigates the tapestries along the walls, as well as the walls themselves, Roy starts looking at the coffee tables scattered around the room. Unlike the desks, there aren’t any arrays— finished or unfinished— on them, but there is a small library’s worth of books scattered between them. 

“What is that?” Ed says, appearing behind him. 

“Pearce’s treatise on scalar geometry and its use in amplifying feedback loops.” Roy says. “Find anything?” 

“Ugh,” Ed complains, “that guy is an idiot. He didn’t need an entire book to say that making shapes comparatively bigger also makes the feedback loop bigger. Also, nothing, unless you count the discovery that these guys managed to transmute this entire room and fill it with expensive shit and yet somehow still didn’t manage to get the walls smooth.” 

“Pearce is not an idiot,” Roy starts, “His chapter on asymetric shapes and their potential applications is actually— wait, the entire room?” 

“Yup,” Ed pops the p. “Guess they did have a bit of architectural knowledge between the fifty of them.” 

“We still don’t know how many there are.” 

“Yeah,” Ed says, “but considering how bad they are at alchemy, I’m going to assume that they each only have a few braincells and therefore couldn’t make anything even this complicated without there being a whole lot of them working together. Also, there were reports of about 50 different alchemists and there’s a whole lot of space in here for just five or so guys.” 

“You’re right,” Roy agrees. “But why aren’t there any here now? And why are there only a few in town?” 

“Maybe they got nervous and left,” Ed suggests. “Doesn’t seem like they’re doing too well for people being payed enough money to decorate as badly as this. I bet their boss started threatening them and they decided to skip town.” 

“I don’t think their boss is the kind of person who takes desertion lightly.” Roy frowns. “The guy who hired us seemed pretty scared.” 

Ed shrugs. “Is there anything else you wanted to look at, or should we keep going?” 

Roy looks around the room one more time. “Let’s go.” 

The second tunnel they explore is on the left. This one runs far straighter than the last, though it still twists back and forth a fair amount. The exit leads to a random spot in the woods. They poke around for a few minutes but it yields nothing, and they’re forced to conclude that it’s just another secret entrance. 

The third one leads down, twisting even more than the first. It ends in a long hallway, a single locked metal door at the end. There doesn’t seem to be anyone inside, judging from the sounds, but Ed presses himself against the side of the hallway anyways, waiting for Roy to kick open the door. 

The door swings open slowly, screeching on its hinges, and the stench that floats out is unimaginable. 

“I guess we know what they’ve been doing with their mistakes,” Roy says, peering into the room. 

Its shape is similar to the first one, but the resemblance ends there. It’s blackened beyond all belief, half-charred corpses littering the room. 

“I guess there wasn’t enough oxygen for the fire to finish once they shut the door,” Ed says. 

Roy claps and reseals the entryway. “There’s nothing to be found here. Let’s move on.” 

The fourth is the most promising yet. It runs straight for less than one hundred meters before turning in to a set of stone stairs leading up to a door. The door, strangely enough, looks handmade, not transmuted. Roy and Ed once again listen for any hints that someone might be beyond the door. Once again, there’s nothing. 

This time, the room they emerge into is empty. It’s huge, big enough to fit more than fifty people, with a cavernous domed roof and floors of inlaid polished marble. Facing Ed and Roy, all the way on the other side of the room, is a pair of steel double doors, chained from the inside. There’s something off about the entire setup, something that makes the hair on the back of Roy’s neck stand up on end. 

“Well this is certainly...” Roy spins around slowly, taking in the architecture. 

“Where are we?” Ed asks. “This place is too big for it to be completely buried we’ve got to be...” His eyes go distant for a moment, then he gasps. 

Roy figures it out a second before he does. 

They meet eyes. “The bathhouse.” 

“Holy shit,” Ed says. “No way the town built this just from under-the-table revenue alone.” 

“No way the town built this and then locked it up for no reason,” Roy adds. “Whoever we’re dealing with has enough money that they’re willing to build things like this.” 

“That does narrow the list a bit,” Ed says. “More than a bit, actually. Not a single former military alchemist has enough personal wealth for something like this.” 

“So either we’re dealing with people who have never been associated with the military at all,” Roy surmises, “or we’re dealing with several factions who are pooling their resources.” 

“It’s the second,” Ed says. “I’ve been thinking that those arrays back in that room were weird for some reason, and I think I know why now. The ones they were using for experimentation were open source— standard textbook stuff. But the ones back in that room were variations on ones that should be classified. I wasn’t sure until now, because it’s been a while since I’ve seen them, but seeing this place makes me sure.” He pauses. “It’s like these people have been trying to create a knockoff fifth laboratory.” 

Roy gets it now— why the room makes him feel weird. It reminds him of the fifth laboratory. It has the same white walls and huge doors, the same circular shape. The only differences are in the materials making up the walls and floors. 

He swears. “We need more people here.” 

“For once,” Ed says, “I’m inclined to agree with you. Let’s get out of here and call Al and Hawkeye. If they’re going to start trying to open any portals, we’re going to need all the help we can get.” 

Roy nods. They both turn around and head for the door back to the tunnel. Roy’s hand is on the doorknob when they realize there is a sound coming from beyond it. The sound of many pairs of feet slowly trampling their way closer and closer to the door. 

“Shit,” Ed swears under his breath, and they both take off running for the pair of double doors on the end of the room. 

From the way it sounds, they have maybe thirty, forty seconds before they’re caught. There’s nowhere to hide. 

Roy claps, sending a burst of flame at the chains holding the doors shut, then another, then another. 

“Stop!” Ed says. “There’s no way you’ll hit the melting point in time.” He points to a bit of rust. “Look, it’s iron. Oxidize it. All you have to do is break one link.” 

Roy doesn’t even nod, just claps, focusing all the hydrogen and oxygen around his hands and throwing it at a single link. 

It works. The link rusts through and the chains fall to the sides. Roy pulls one of the doors open and rushes through, expecting Ed to follow. Ed doesn’t follow. 

“What the hell are you doing, Fullmetal?” He hisses, because suddenly Ed is fourteen and Roy is his CO trying to keep his idiot subordinate from getting hurt. “Hurry it up.” 

Ed shakes his head, turning away from Roy and squaring his shoulders. “They’ll know that someone has been in here anyways. I may as well stay and see what information I can get. You go get Hawkeye.” 

“I’m not going to just let you—” 

“You’re not letting me do anything,” Ed spins around, glaring at him. “This is my mission. Don’t order me around.” Ed’s face softens. He must see the worry Roy is failing to keep hidden. “I’ll be fine, Roy. Trust me.” 

Roy lets out a sharp breath, grits his teeth, and closes the door, watching Ed disappear behind it. 

Roy doesn’t let himself stay. He wants to— wants to listen to Ed smile and insult the people to their faces— wants to listen as Ed somehow manages to convince them to keep him around— wants to hear someone get punched if it goes wrong. But that would defeat the whole point of him leaving, so he goes, hoping that Ed hasn’t miscalculated. 

Edward Elric makes a terrible prisoner, he knows this. God knows he’s pitied the numerous poor fools who had heard about an adolescent state alchemist and thought they could make some easy money by holding him ransom. Even without alchemy, Ed is any captor’s nightmare: deeply annoying and stubborn as hell with no problems biting anyone who pisses him off. Unfortunately, the thought that the people who found Ed are probably miserable doesn’t make him feel much better about leaving Ed behind. 

He races up a flight of stairs and starts searching for a phone. He’s almost in the clear. 

Then he hears the click of someone turning the safety off a gun. 

Roy turns around to face the mayor of the town and foreman of the mines, who has apparently been put on guard duty. 

“You,” he accuses, recognizing Roy from the previous night. “What are you doing here? Where’s your partner? 

There’s not an explanation Roy can give that will convince him that Roy is just a harmless civilian, or even a not-so-harmless civilian, and he can’t afford the sound that a gunshot might make. Roy grimaces. 

“Don’t shoot,” he says, faking a tremor in his voice. “Please— please, I’ll tell you everything.” 

The mayor narrows his eyes and cocks his gun. “Start talking.” 

“Look,” Roy says slowly and carefully raises his hands, “I— I didn’t want to, you have to believe me. But they made me do it.” 

“Who made you do what?” 

“The mi—” Roy claps, taking the other man off guard. The air lights up with a burst of flame, knocking the foreman down. Roy claps again and puts his hands to the floor, causing the wood to twist up and around the foreman’s hands. 

Roy grabs the gun, removes the magazine, and stores it in his back pocket for the moment. Then, very quickly, before the man can yell for help, he knocks him out with a well-placed fist. 

Fuck, he thinks. He doesn’t really have anywhere to store a man and he can’t afford to go to the police in Thatchpoole for fear of tipping the other people off. _Alright_ , Roy thinks. _I guess I have a new houseguest._

Roy double checks that the man is out before reaching for the phone. He’ll be able to hear anyone approach from the basement, and see anyone approach from the outside. He dials Riza’s home number and drums his fingers, once, twice, before she picks up. 

“Hey,” he says, before she can say anything. 

“General?” She sounds concerned, but not surprised to hear him calling from outside of Central. “It’s the middle of the night. Why are you up?” 

Roy glances anxiously towards the stairway to the basement. He highly doubts that this phone is tapped, but it never hurts to be too careful. “Elizabeth,” he says, “I need to know where Al is. His brother has gotten himself into a tight spot and I could use someone calm and level headed,” _with freakishly incredible combat alchemy and maybe a gun or two_ , “to help get him out of it.” 

“Oh,” Riza says, putting on her Elizabeth tone. It’s a subtle shift, but suddenly she’s a lot bubblier and a lot less annoyed at Roy. “I can help you out there. Al is still in Central. His girlfriend decided to surprise him by meeting him here, so they’re sightseeing for a few days before heading East.” 

“Perfect,” Roy says. “You know that town they were looking at getting a summer home in?” 

He can feel Riza’s eyebrows rising as he talks. He does not look forward to the lecture he’ll get when she catches up with him. She’ll be right— she always is— but telling her that won’t do a thing about whatever punishment she plans to heap upon him. 

“I think I know what you’re talking about,” she says. “Would you like to ask Al yourself? I can give you the number of his hotel.” 

“Yeah, that’d be really helpful, Elizabeth,” Roy replies. “By the way, how’s work going? Any chance you’ll be able to pay me a visit soon?” 

Riza sighs, dropping the Elizabeth act for a half second and Roy swears he can hear her silently asking what he’s gotten himself into this time. “Well,” she says, “my boss has been gone for a bit, so I’ve had to pick up some slack, but he gave me permission to get a few days off.” 

“No chance you could get here with Al, could you?” Roy asks. “I could really use your advice.” _And your pinpoint accuracy._

“Of course, darling,” Riza says. “I’ll call him after you deliver the news. We can both take the five AM train.” 

Roy wants to declare his love for her right in the middle of the lobby despite the group of possibly armed and definitely hostile alchemists below him. “You’re a gem, Elizabeth.” 

Elizabeth’s— not Riza’s— floats up from the receiver. “Don’t flirt with me too much. You don’t want to make promises you can’t follow through with. Here,” she lists Al’s hotel number and the room off and Roy scribbles it down on the message pad next to the phone. “See you tomorrow.” 

“See ya,” Roy says, and hangs up. 

He dials the hotel number, getting a sleepy receptionist. “I need to talk to the man in Room 104,” he says. 

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist replies. “But he’s asleep right now.” 

Roy resists the urge to swear and the slightly lesser urge to pull rank just so he won’t have to waste any time arguing with hotel staff. “I can assure you that this call is of the utmost importance. I need you to wake him up right now.” 

“Hm,” the receptionist replies grumpily. “But I’ll need to have some proof of relationship to him.” 

‘And how in the exact fuck am I meant to do that over the phone?’ Roy wants to say. 

“I’m sorry,” he says instead, partially because he’s polite and partially because Al might hurt him if he terrorizes an innocent hotel employee. “But I know him and his fiancée and I can describe how they look.” 

“Fine,” the receptionist reluctantly allows. “Go ahead.” 

“He’s got golden hair and golden eyes— about 178 centimeters, and his fiancée is Xingese.” 

“That’s not—” 

“And,” Roy adds before the man can protest that anyone could know that, “she has a small panda named Xiao Mei that looks like a black and white cat and bites almost anyone who tries to touch her. Usually hard enough that you might have to see a doctor.” 

“Ah,” the receptionist says, and Roy can hear in his voice that he made the Xiao Mei mistake when he met her. “I’ll go get him for you.” 

Roy holds back a chuckle. He’s had lunch with Mei Chang a few times and he made the same mistake once too. Not that he makes a habit of touching other people’s pets (though Black Hyate seems to physically glue himself to Roy’s head whenever he gets the chance), but Xiao Mei had been on his plate and he had assumed that just because Al could touch her, he could to. Riza had watched it happen with a small smile curling at the corners of her mouth, which is her version of laughing uproariously at his suffering, and then told the entire team. He’d been subject to panda jokes for months. 

Al picks up the phone after a few minutes. “Hello?” 

“Hello, Al,” Roy says. 

“Genera—” 

“Sorry for the late call,” he cuts Al off. “But your brother is in a tight spot and I could use your help getting him out of it.” 

Al groans. “What did brother do now?” 

“It’s a long story,” Roy says. “Too long for a midnight call. Do you think you can make the five AM train?” 

“Yes,” Al says. “I guess you’ll explain it to me when I get there?” 

“I will,” Roy promises. “And I’m sorry for interrupting your visit. I won’t ask her to come, but she’d be welcome. I could use the help.” You can never have too much backup, at least when the backup is a terrifying marksman, an alchemical prodigy, and Al’s terrifyingly adorable alkhestral genius of a girlfriend. “And don’t blame your brother— well, don’t blame him entirely. I couldn’t stop him.” 

“No one can,” Al says, resigned. “I’ll see you around nine.” 

“Thank you,” Roy is surprisingly sincere. “By the way, Elizabeth should call in the next few minutes. She said she’d come with you.” 

“Elizabeth?” Al asks, “Who— oh. I’ll wait for her call.” 

“Sorry for the trouble,” Roy apologizes. “I know I was supposed to keep him out of it.” 

“It’s not like you had a great track record of doing that to begin with.” Al yawns. 

Roy snorts. Apparently, Alphonse gets much ruder when he’s tired. “You’re not wrong. See you tomorrow, Alphonse.” 

“See you tomorrow, sir.” 

Roy hangs up, looks at the man on the floor next to him, and resists the urge to groan. He pinches the man to make sure he’s still passed out, then claps and restores the room to its former state. With any luck, no one will notice the mayor is gone until Ed is back and Roy can safely arrest every alchemist in this godforsaken town. 

He sleeps late, but he doesn’t sleep well. He’s caught between dreaming and waking the entire night, tossing and turning. He’s just glad he doesn’t have any nightmares. That would be worse. 

He wakes to the sound of someone opening the door and is suddenly very glad he decided to sleep fully dressed. There, standing like a beautiful goddess of mercy, is Riza. She would kill him if he ever said that out loud, but that’s how he feels. 

“You’ve certainly slept in, sir.” 

“Late night?” Roy offers, though he knows she had a much shorter one. (Then again, he considers, she didn’t carry what was essentially an eighty kilogram sack of potatoes through the woods while it complained all the way and had only fallen asleep once Roy had given it two of the three blankets.) 

She sighs, shakes her head fondly and steps inside. Following behind her are Al and Mei, both dressed in traveling clothes and looking, if not chipper, then at least not ready to kill him from exhaustion. 

“Hello, General Mustang,” Mei says, Xiao Mei glaring at him suspiciously from her shoulder. 

“It’s been a while,” Al says. 

“Mei Chang, Alphonse,” Roy says. “Thank you so much for coming. I’m sorry to interrupt your visit.” 

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Mei says, sitting down. “Xiao Mei and I are always happy to help.” 

Roy resists the urge to snort. Xiao Mei, at least, definitely isn’t. 

“Alright,” Al says, putting his bag down at the foot of the table and sitting down. “What did my brother do this time?” 

“You’re not going to like it,” Roy mutters, avoiding Al’s eyes. He sighs. “Ed decided to get himself captured.” 

“He _what_?” Al’s eyes are narrowed, his gaze intense enough that Roy almost misses the look Riza gets when he called Edward Elric ‘Ed’. 

“It gets worse,” Roy says as Riza comes to sit down next to him. “Look at his notes.” Roy gestures towards Ed’s notebook, left abandoned on the table when they had left to go exploring. 

Al pulls it over between him and Mei, and they both pale. 

“That’s not good,” Al says. “That is very, very, not good.” 

“What is it?” Riza directs her question to Roy. 

“It’s not quite human transmutation,” Roy says, “at least not yet. They’re still trying to get it right.” 

Mei looks up. “There aren’t any symbols for souls in this. Is it an incomplete mock-up?” 

Roy shakes his head. “As far as we can tell, they’re planning to get the souls from somewhere else.” 

“A philosopher’s stone,” Riza whispers in horror. 

Roy grimaces. “That’s our guess, at least.” He exhales sharply in frustration. “Last night, we were exploring the tunnels that they’ve built underneath the town. We found a room that they’d been doing research in with a couple of half-finished arrays that Ed said were classified military material.” 

Al looks up at Roy. “Did he say which ones? Did you get a good look at them?” 

“No and no,” Roy says. “I’m sorry, but I can’t create them from memory for you. All I remember is that Ed didn’t seem very impressed with the work they’d been doing.” 

“He never is,” Alphonse says. “I once watched him walk up to the lead alchemist of the Drachman emperor’s retinue and tell him that the work they’d been doing to create a viaduct impervious to ice was horribly wrong at best, but probably closer to impressively idiotic, and that the freezing cold must have also frozen their brains because there was no way anyone with the intelligence of a child older than five could get something that wrong. Of course,” Al says, “I’m paraphrasing. There was way more swearing when he said it.” 

“Is that why he’s wanted in Drachma for arson and destruction of property?” Roy asks. 

Al sighs. “That was the start of it.” 

Roy shakes his head, forcing back the fond smile that’s trying to make its way onto his face at the thought of Ed causing mayhem. It’s funny when it’s someone else’s problem. “In any case, the next thing we found was worse.” He meets Al’s eyes. “It was a replica of the fifth laboratory.” 

The cabin is silent. 

“What are they planning to do?” Riza asks in a quiet voice. 

Roy grits his teeth. “We don’t know. That’s the problem.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “A group of people caught up to us when we were in there. I tried to convince Ed to get out of there with me, but he decided to stay. Their boss is showing up tonight and he thought that getting himself captured would be the best way to see who is behind this whole thing.” 

Al closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I am going to kill him for this.” 

Xiao Mei looks entirely too pleased at the thought of Al killing the person who ruined her vacation. 

“Do you have a plan?” Riza asks. 

Roy shakes his head. “Not yet.” 

“Well then,” she says, meeting his tired eyes with her warm, brown ones. “We’d better start coming up with one. 

Al, Mei, and Xiao Mei are perched atop one of the bars that the tunnel runs right under, right where the one from the faux fifth laboratory and the main one meet up. Roy can just barely see them from where he and Riza are sat right next to a window on the first floor of the bathhouse. 

They’d broken in an hour ago, just after it had closed. Mei had come with them to check for chi underneath the building. There hadn’t been any, Ed’s or otherwise. Roy hopes that’s good— that they’ve just gotten there early and not that they’ve guessed the place wrong altogether. 

He and Riza are waiting for Al and Mei to give them the signal that they’ve felt the chi. Placed as they are, they should be able to feel a group of people enter the tunnel to the bathhouse. That’ll be his and Riza’s cue to head down to the basement while Al and Mei enter through their own tunnel that they’d made earlier. 

“It’d be hard if we were just watching for Edward,” Mei had explained when he’d asked, “but since we’re watching for a bunch of people, and this isn’t a big town, it should be noticeable enough to catch our attention.” Roy just hopes she’s right. 

Riza has been silent as the sun has set, barely looking at him. Now that it’s the two of them alone together and they have nothing to do but wait, it’s gotten a lot more awkward. 

Roy takes one more look at where Mei and Al are sat before turning to Riza. 

“I’m an idiot,” he says. 

Riza doesn’t look at him, but her eyes crinkle just the slightest amount in the way that Roy knows she’s amused and listening. 

“You were right and I was wrong,” he continues. “I was being useless. It was the right call to ban me from working.” 

“Not that it worked,” Riza points out. 

“No,” Roy says, “but it was the right call anyways.” He pauses. “And so was sending Ed— Edward to give me a push.” 

“Glad I could help, sir,” Riza says, and her gaze darts over to where he’s sitting. “Though I didn’t expect you to start sleeping with him.” 

“We haven’t technically slept together yet,” Roy says, just because he hasn’t had the opportunity to annoy Riza in almost a week and he knows she thinks it’s just on the obnoxious side of funny when he deliberately misunderstands things. 

Riza rolls her eyes fondly. “If you say so, sir. Though,” she continues, lips twitching in the way that means she’s about to get back at him, “isn’t he a little young for you?” 

Roy groans. “Please don’t start with that, Major. The Madam is already going to track me down and interrogate me at gunpoint when she finds out.” 

“She might be right,” Riza says more seriously. “Have you really thought about what the information that you’re sleeping with a former subordinate— a former, much younger, male subordinate— could do to your reputation?” 

“I’m not stupid, Major,” Roy says. “I’ve thought about it.” 

“Have you?” Her face is completely neutral, the only guide to her emotion is the tinge of frustration in her voice. “Have you really?” A frown touches her lips. “You do know what sorts of rumors will come.” 

“I—” Roy starts, but she silences him with a look 

“That’s the crux of the issue, isn’t it, sir?” Riza says. “It doesn’t matter what you actually did. People are going to assume you’re a pedophile once they make the connection. It doesn’t matter if your relationship wasn’t romantic or sexual in nature until now. Because of your position, people are going to assume it was, and any character witnesses you get will just be seen as masking your misconduct.” 

“I know,” Roy says. “I have a plan.” 

“Hm,” she acknowledges. 

“I have time, Major. Edward travels too much to be in Central often enough for anyone to catch him immediately and we can avoid public displays of affection when we’re seen together.” He frowns. “Assuming Edward doesn’t get bored with me after a few months, and I haven’t, by some miracle, strangled him in his sleep yet, we can introduce the relationship to the public.” 

“And how is that going to do anything for you?” 

“First of all,” Roy says, “and I know you know this, Major, so stop being so obtuse, making the choice to introduce the relationship to the public already absolves me of a lot of suspicion of carrying on an affair in secret. Second of all, I’m willing to bet there’s a newspaper out there willing to do a human-interest story on him. He describes our relationship as a superior and a subordinate constantly at each other's throats, throws in a line about how I actually kept him and his brother from anything too awful, and says something about how I’ve done a lot of good.” 

“You do realize,” Riza says, “that releasing that after the relationship gets out just makes it look like you’re covering something up.” 

Roy smirks. “That’s why we release it beforehand and claim that the relationship started after it. The only people who would know different would be me, you, Edward, Alphonse, and Mei.” He frowns. “It’s a risk lying about it, of course, but the alternative is either not seeing each other for several months, which, I’ll be frank, is dangerous in a different way, or just saying we won’t see each other altogether, which I can’t imagine will end well.” 

Riza considers it for a moment. “And what happens if it gets out before then?” 

“I improvise,” Roy says. 

Riza has a strange expression on her face. The strict discipline has melted away, leaving something Roy rarely gets to see: pure love and concern. “Is he worth it?” 

“There’s no way to tell.” Roy’s expression softens as he looks at her. “But, yes, I think he might be.” 

“Well then, sir,” she says, giving him a rare smile. “I’m behind you.” 

Roy looks at her, honest and vulnerable in a way that he’s never let anyone but her see. “Thank you, Major.” 

They sit in silence together, the way they have for years, watching Mei and Al’s small figures blend in more and more with the darkening sky. 

It’s been another hour, maybe more, when they see Mei’s silhouette leave the roof, followed by Al. 

“That’s our cue,” Roy says, standing up. “Let’s go.” 

He doesn’t run to the basement— he wants to get a good look at what they’re doing first and that means letting them set up— but he finds himself hard-pressed to slow down. He doesn’t not trust Ed’s survival abilities; he just doesn’t trust Ed’s survival instincts. 

They get to the bottom of the stairs and turn to the side of the double door where Roy had made a passageway earlier. The entrance is covered by a thin sheet of plaster, concealing the small room that Roy had created for himself and Riza. They slip in quietly and Roy re-seals the entrance as Riza moves to look through one of the two holes he’d made, both far enough above eye level that no one will notice them unless they look up. 

He hoists himself up onto the platform with Riza, far enough apart from her that any blasts shouldn’t hit either of them, and looks in to the room. 

There’s a group of maybe thirty or so alchemists, in the middle of which is a familiar golden-haired scowl. Ed is, thankfully, not restrained, but one of the alchemists is pointing a gun at him as Ed paints a transmutation circle. Ed doesn’t look happy, but the muscles in his back aren’t tensed, and Roy relaxes. Ed doesn’t think he’s going to be shot. That, at least, is good news. 

Roy shifts, trying to get a better look at the array that Ed is painting. It’s a variant on the experimental one, he can tell that much, but he’s too far away to get a good look at the specifics of it. Roy frowns in frustration, scanning the room for other clues. Roy glares at the graphite in the corner reproachfully. He still hasn’t forgiven it for ruining his clothes. He can see small piles of what he’s assuming are other chemicals, but no tanks of oxygen nor anything resembling calcium. 

They must be planning to use the limestone in the room for its calcium carbonate, Roy realizes, then making up the rest of the oxygen by taking it from the air. Roy grimaces. He hopes the room is well-ventilated, or they’re going to pass out halfway through the transmutation and have to face the backlash. 

Aside from the alchemist holding a gun to Ed’s back, and another one who’s supervising the painting, the alchemists are milling around in small circles, chatting nervously. They keep glancing up at the double doors next to Riza and Roy like they’re expecting someone to come through at any minute and declare that they’re all headed for jail. 

Roy smirks. They’re not entirely wrong. 

Ed finishes painting the array, tossing the paintbrush into the red can of paint that he’d been using and crossing his arms. He mutters something uncomplimentary at the alchemist holding a gun to his back, or at least Roy assumes it’s uncomplimentary from the way the alchemist shoves the barrel more firmly in to Ed’s spinal cord. 

The double doors slowly creak open, no longer covered in chains. Finally, the show is about to begin. 

The first to emerge is the man from the bar that they had seen threatening the alchemist in silver. He has a gun out, dangling loosely in the grip of his left hand in a way that suggests he is intimately familiar with it. Behind him is a much less intimidating figure— a small man with salt and pepper hair dressed sharply in a black suit with a red tie. Then Roy gets a good look at his face and it’s all he can do to keep from swearing out loud. 

Roy recognizes him from the trials they had held after the Promised Day. Abel Conelly had been one of the main researchers at the fifth laboratory before it closed down, and at the third after that, but since he’d started working for the military after the Ishvalan war had finished and none of his assistants would give anything away, they hadn’t had enough proof to do anything besides dismiss him. 

Riza shoots a sidelong glance at Roy. She recognizes him too. 

The strangest reaction is Ed’s. He turns around to face the man, already opening his mouth to start insulting him, but when he sees who it is, his mouth clamps shut. 

Then the former researcher claps his hands and starts to laugh. “Gentlemen,” he says, extending his hands to the alchemists scattered throughout the room, “when you said you had found someone to complete the research, I didn’t realize you had meant that you’d captured Edward Elric.” 

Almost all of the alchemists look stunned as the realization sets in; a few of them have their jaws drop in surprise. 

One of the alchemists steps forward and Roy recognizes him as the man in silver. 

“ _This_ is Edward Elric?” He asks. 

“Oh yes, Mr. Steffen,” Conelly says. “This is he.” 

“But he’s so young!” Steffen protests. “This can’t possibly be the Fullmetal Alchemist.” 

“You’re correct in one thing,” Conelly says. “He’s no longer an alchemist.” 

“Doesn’t mean I still can’t beat your teeth in, snivelling bastard.” Ed’s bravado is back, but Roy can still see the look in his eyes from earlier. He’s scared, and when Edward Elric gets scared, it means things have just gotten very, very dicey. 

Conelly fixes him with a cold glare. “Restrain him,” he says to the man holding the gun. “Now.” 

Ed grits his teeth and Roy can tell that he’s keeping himself from punching the man putting him in handcuffs. 

With Ed restrained, Conelly turns back to the crowd of alchemists. “Now,” he says, cracking his knuckles. “Let’s begin.” 

Several alchemists drag the components to the center of the circle and Roy hears the safety click off on Riza’s rifle. 

‘Wait,’ he mouths. She frowns, but does as he says. 

The majority of the alchemists back away as Steffen steps to the edge. The man kneels, then, hands shaking, presses them to the transmutation circle, and the room lights up blue. There’s a silence as everyone shields their eyes from the bolts of energy crackling through the air. Then, the lightning stops, and Steffen is left kneeling in front of a broken transmutation circle, a body in front of him. 

The body is a strange, vaguely inhuman thing. It’s varying shades of tan, with no hair to speak of, nor any genitals. It has lips, though, and two colorless eyes lying half-open. That isn’t the disturbing part. The disturbing part is that Roy can see it breathing. 

Initially, Steffen looks more surprised than relieved that it worked. As he removes his hands, the realization sets in and he slumps in relief. 

“What now?” he says, looking to Conelly. 

“Now,” Conelly says, pulling out a small red stone from his pocket, “we create the perfect soldier.” 

Ed rips free of the person holding him. “Don’t you dare, you bastard!” 

Roy looks at Riza and she nods. That’s their cue. 

Roy claps and presses his hands to the walls, causing them to explode in a shower of dust. He rushes in, trying to find Conelly and his philosopher’s stone before the alchemists around him figure out what’s happening. 

He heads for the place he last saw Conelly, dodging the various people stumbling around. When he gets there, Conelly’s place is empty. Roy swears. 

All of a sudden, a mess of golden hair comes barreling towards him, knocking him on his back. 

“Oh, hey,” Ed says, getting off him. “Sorry.” He holds out his cuffs. “Iron.” 

Roy claps, then presses a hand to the chain linking them and it dissolves in a shower of red powder. 

“Did you see where Conelly went?” He asks, getting up. 

Ed shakes his head. “Do you have someone on the exits?” 

“Riza on the main doors. I’m not sure if Al or Mei are still guarding the tunnel.” 

The dust is beginning to settle and Roy and Ed find they can look around more clearly. 

“I’ll head back, you head forwards,” Ed says, and then he’s disappearing back into the cloud of smoke. 

Roy heads in the opposite direction, back towards the main entrance. It’s unlikely someone got past Riza, but in the dust, it’s possible. He hears one gunshot, then another. Riza must be firing at point-blank range. Roy isn’t going to risk getting in her way. Instead he heads after Edward. 

The doorway to the tunnels is open and clear of dust. Roy doesn’t see Mei or Al anywhere, so he heads through. There’s a strange pattern in the dirt on the floor, and Roy recalls that he hadn’t seen the body anywhere. Roy turns a corner, hands posed to clap, and runs straight in to Conelly clicking the safety off a pistol. 

“I wouldn’t try anything,” Conelly says, “I’m a good shot.” 

Roy grits his teeth and puts his hands by his sides. “What are you planning?” 

“Hm?” Conelly kicks at the body by his side. “I thought it was obvious. It’s another test of the possibility of an immortal legion.” 

“Are you stupid?” Roy growls. “You saw what happened last time.” 

“I’ve changed the process,” Conelly says, holding up his philosopher’s stone. “I take it you know what this is?” 

“Don’t patronize me,” Roy narrows his eyes. “How many people did you have to kill for that?” 

Conelly laughs. “Only one, General.” 

“What?” Shock smooths over Roy’s face where anger had been. 

“Do you know what the problem was with the last immortal legion?” Conelly keeps his gun trained on Roy, but kneels down. “They had no will to control. They were mindless energy, shards of souls longing for warmth. This however,” he holds the stone up, “is one complete human soul.” Conelly takes the stone and shoves it into the left eye of the body, causing it to cry out in pain. “Let’s see what happens when we give it a body, shall we?” 

“Let’s not,” comes a voice from behind him, and suddenly, there’s a dangerously sharp knife at Conelly’s throat. 

“Drop the gun,” Ed orders, pressing the knife against Conelly’s neck hard enough to start drawing blood. 

Conelly drops it, and Roy breathes out. 

The second the gun hits the floor, Ed pulls out another knife with his left hand, flipping it in the air so he can get a better grip. He catches it neatly and hits Conelly in the temple with the pommel. Conelly collapses on the ground. 

“I’ve been waiting to do that for a while,” Ed remarks, re-sheathing his knives. 

Roy bends down and handcuffs Conelly. 

Ed frowns, amused. “Do you just carry those with you?” 

“Riza gave them to me earlier,” Roy explains. “Do you always carry those knives?” 

“Yes,” Ed says. “They’re useful.” 

Roy lets out a huff of amusement. “You don’t say.” He turns to Conelly, nudging him on to his face with his toe. “What’s your problem with him?” 

Ed frowns. “A little over a year ago, I was investigating a series of disappearances in the south. It had been happening every few months for a couple years, always five at a time and always people almost nobody would miss. Turns out this guy,” he jerks a thumb at Conelly, “had been making philosopher’s stones. He— he captured me and made me watch as he made another one.” Ed turns away in shame. “I didn’t get out in time to stop him. I couldn’t even catch him before he got away.” 

Roy wants to reach out to Ed— offer him some sort of reassurance. But there’s nothing he can say that will make it better. 

“Do you think he was bluffing about the single-souled stone?” Roy asks, finally, poking the body at his feet. 

The body at their feet shifts, letting out a low moan. 

“No,” Ed says faintly. “I don’t think he was.” 

Ed kneels, pulling the newly-activated body in to a sitting position. “Hello?” He says, leaning in close. “Are you there?” 

“Where... am I?” The body’s breaths are labored. It raises one hand to its bleeding eye, where the philosopher’s stone had been shoved into its body. “Why does it hurt?” 

“You’re okay now,” Ed assures. “We have someone who can fix it for you.” 

“Why does it hurt?” the body repeats. 

“You were injured,” Ed says. “What’s your name?” 

“Why does it hurt?” 

A horrified expression comes across Ed’s face. “Do you understand me?” 

“Why does it hurt?” 

“No.” Ed’s voice is shaded with terror. “Talk to me.” 

The body breathes in and out, each breath so labored it looks as if it’s in pain. “Why... does it hurt?” 

“Talk to me!” Ed breathes heavily, eyes wide and furious. “Please, please. Talk to me.” 

The body just keeps breathing its horrifying, shaky, breaths. 

“Ed,” Roy says softly, resting a hand on his shoulder. “It can’t understand you. It’s too far gone.” 

“No!” Ed shouts, shoving Roy’s hand off his shoulder. “No! They're alive! They can hear me.” Ed clenches his hands in to fists. “It’s my fault they’re like this. They have to be okay. I have to be able help them.” 

The body just lets out a dull moan. 

“Brother?” Comes Al’s voice from the end of the corridor. “Are you alright? What’s going on?” When he doesn’t hear a response, he sprints around the corner. “Brother, are you—” He stops when he sees the body. “Brother?” 

Ed turns his face to look at Al, hands trembling. “They can hear me, right? They have to be able to.” 

Al nears the body, kneeling down next to his brother. He touches the thing’s face gently, tilting it up so he can get a good look. 

“Are you okay?” He asks it. “I’m here to help.” 

“It hurts,” comes the voice in cracked, strained tones. 

“What hurts?” Al asks. “Your eye?” 

“All,” the body says. “All... hurts.” 

“Where?” Al asks. “I can start with the eye and we can work on the rest.” 

“Hurts,” the body repeats, more intensely than the last time. 

“I know,” Al says in a soothing voice. “Just let me help. I can make it better.” Al claps and presses his hand to the eye, healing it instantly. 

“Hurts,” the body chokes out as Al takes his hands off. 

“It shouldn’t,” Al says, “I fixed the eye. I—” he turns to Ed. “I don’t know if I can do anything. It seems... broken.” 

“No,” Ed refuses. “You can help them. You can do something!” 

“It’s not like that, brother,” Al says, voice taking on the same strangled tones as Ed. “I don’t think it’s the body that’s the problem. Souls weren’t—” he shudders, “souls weren’t meant to be separated from their bodies. And this one... this one didn’t even have a container for who knows how long. The body is fine. The soul is— is beyond me.” 

“No!” Ed is desperate. “If Hohenheim could talk to the souls, then so can we. We can make this one listen. We can help it!” 

Al shakes his head slowly, not meeting Ed’s eyes. 

“No!” Ed’s voice is cracking, eyes filling with tears. “Not again. What was the whole point of all the research we’ve done if we still can’t save even one person?” 

Al clenches the fabric of his pants tightly, teeth gritted. 

“Kill... me,” the body says. 

“No!” Ed refuses, tears spilling on to his cheeks. “You can’t die! You just got a body. Use it!” 

“Kill me,” the body repeats, and for the first time, it opens its one good eye. Its pupils are tiny, overwhelmed by pure white irises, and its stretched wide in pain. 

Al claps his hands and slowly raises them, still trembling, to its face. 

“No!” Ed grabs his brother’s hands and tears them away from the body. “You can’t!” 

“It’s alright, Alphonse,” Roy says quietly as Al lets out a shaky breath. “I know the array. I can do it.” 

“Don’t you dare!” Ed shouts up at him, and Roy flinches back. “Don’t touch them.” 

Ed turns back to the body and takes its head in his hands. “Please, you have to live. I can’t let another person die.” 

The body lets out a long, shuddering breath. “Not... living.” Its head rolls back, eye closing again. 

Ed keeps his hands on its face, still trembling and crying. “No,” he repeats. “No, no, no. Not again. Not again.” 

“Ed.” Roy kneels down as well, tentatively reaching out his hand and placing it on Ed’s shoulder. “There’s nothing we can do. This is their final request.” 

Ed is shuddering beneath his fingertips, unable to move. Ed’s hands are wrapped around himself, clutching his arms in an ineffective defense against the reality of the situation. Roy’s heart aches for Ed, who is so good and kind and caring that the thought of his failure having hurt even one person like this causes him to break down. 

“We can let them rest,” Roy says gently. 

Finally, Ed starts crying, huge sobs wracking his body as Roy gathers him in his arms. Roy holds him, one hand on his back and the other on the back of his head, until Ed’s grwat sobs become unstable breaths. Then, he turns so that Ed can’t see the body anymore and nods at Al. 

Al takes a deep breath, claps, and places his hands on the body. 

It disintegrates within a matter of seconds, leaving the philosophers stone sparking red against the darkness until it too turns to dust. 

“We should head back.” Al sounds shell-shocked. “Check on Mei and Riza.” 

“I’ll follow you in a moment,” Roy says. 

Al sees Ed still trembling in Roy’s arms, and nods, his footsteps echoing as he walks away. 

“Hey,” Roy says softly. Ed is slumped against him in a way that makes him shorter than usual, letting Roy’s face be buried in his hair. “Ed?” 

Ed takes a deep breath. When he speaks, his voice is shaky and cold. “We should go back.” He doesn’t look at Roy. “You don’t have to hold me.” 

Roy lets go, uncertain. Ed looks unmoored as he walks back, almost half-dead himself. It’s not a look Roy has seen on him before. He doesn’t like it. 

Still, he slings Conelly over his shoulder and follows Ed back up the tunnel. 

The room is surprisingly unchaotic when they get there. Mei has trapped all the alchemists in stone, even the ones whose bullet wounds she’s treating. Riza is leaning against one of the doors, coolly handling her rifle and staring down anyone who looks like they might be thinking of escaping, and Al has started interrogating some of the alchemists, Xiao Mei on his shoulder. 

Al gives Ed a worried glance when he enters the room. His face only grows darker when he sees Ed’s state, and his gaze darts to Roy. Roy shakes his head. He tried his best, but with Ed, as he’s slowly coming to realize, his best isn’t always enough. 

“Major?” He calls, depositing Conelly’s unconscious body in the center of the room 

“Yes, sir?” Riza walks over. 

“Search him before he wakes up,” Roy instructs. “Then have Mei trap him. I’m going to go talk to some of the accomplices.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

Roy walks over to Steffen, noticing that Ed has collapsed against a wall and doesn’t seem to be moving. 

He stops in front of Steffen, coughing conspicuously when the man doesn’t look up. 

Steffen’s eyes widen as he looks at Roy. “Who _are_ you?” 

“That’s not really necessary for you to know,” Roy says coolly. “I’ll be asking the questions. Who are you, and why are you working for Conelly?” 

Steffen stares up at Roy accusatorily. “Why do you want to know?” 

“Because,” Roy says, “you might get off with a lighter sentence if you tell the truth.” 

Roy watches Steffen work through the pros and cons in his head. When Steffen looks up at him, he raises an eyebrow. “Well?” 

Steffen grits his teeth and starts talking. 

It turns out Steffen was a military alchemist in West city. After the Promised Day, his role as a weapons specialist became mostly obsolete, and he was let go. Conelly tracked him down a year and a half ago and asked him if he could create a perfect human body, and he had promised Steffen immortality if he could. Steffen had taken the offer and come to Lydfax a few months after that, planning to use it as a home base for its carbon resources and relative anonymity. Conelly had periodically sent along other alchemists after that, along with funds, hoping that they’d be able to crack the code. A month ago, he’d become impatient, claiming his employer was done waiting, and said he was coming to see what they had. Steffen, who had been exaggerating their progress, had given up and started drinking every night, letting most of the alchemists under his employ leave. Only a few stayed. The one who had been in the purple, the one who had searched them, and two more, one of whom owned the house that they had been using the basement of. 

“Why did the others come back?” Roy asks. 

Steffen meets Roy’s eyes. “They hoped that Conelly might still give them time. And the cure for death.” 

Roy frowns, thanks him for his candor, and moves on. 

He’s four alchemists in— two of whom have corroborated Steffen’s story and one of whom simply refused to talk— when Riza calls him over. 

“He’s waking up.” She nods towards Conelly, who Mei has imprisoned in stone, arms tied apart, back to a wall, and ankles tied down. “I didn’t find anything on him. He must be staying around here somewhere.” 

“Thank you, Major,” Roy says. “He has a benefactor. We need to figure out who it is. See if you can find where he’s staying and search the room.” 

“Are you sure you don’t need me here, sir?” 

“I’ve got plenty of backup, Major. Don’t you worry.” 

Riza looks around the room as if to check that Mei and the Elrics are still there to take care of Roy, then nods and leaves. 

He crosses his arms and waits for Conelly to finish waking up. 

“Well, General Mustang,” are the first words out of his mouth, “I suppose I should be honored.” 

“Don’t get any ideas about your own importance,” Roy says, staring down at him. “I wasn’t looking for you.” 

“And yet you found me. How...” Conelly pauses, “fortuitous.” 

Roy raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “In what way?” 

“You’ve found yourself in the presence of one of the few people left who might be able to help you.” There’s an unsettling gleam in Conelly’s eyes. 

“Help me how?” Roy maintains his flat tone. 

“I’ve heard rumors, you know,” Conelly says, “of factions in Creta mobilizing for war. It would seem that they’re not quite so happy with your peace treaty as they pretended to be.” Conelly shakes his head, the very picture of condescension. “It’s a pity your military is so weak now. You’re vulnerable, Mustang.” 

Roy allows a smirk onto his face. “This is how you’re planning to get out of a prison sentence? Rumors?” 

“Hardly,” Conelly’s eyes are sharp as he takes Roy in. “I can provide you with power. You can’t deny how useful philosopher’s stones are.” 

“I would never consent to the creation of one,” Roy interrupts. “Don’t tell me you think otherwise.” 

“Of course, of course,” Conelly mutters. “But what about ones that already exist?” He cocks his head. “I know you’d be willing to use those, and I know where plenty are hidden.” 

Damn. Conelly isn’t wrong. Philosopher’s stones are useful things— he wouldn’t be able to see without one— and while he doesn’t like it, he’s willing to use ones that already exist. On the other hand, Conelly is too dangerous to even give a plea bargain to. Even if he isn’t lying about the philosopher’s stones, he’s scheming to get out of justice. It’s not worth it. 

“Not interested,” Roy says. “I do have a few other questions for you, though.” 

“By all means,” Conelly says. “Ask.” 

Roy’s voice goes quiet and cold. “You promised them immortality.” 

“That’s not a question,” Conelly says. “But yes, I did.” He pauses, looking Roy up and down, re-evaluating. “Interested, are you? Odd, I didn’t take you for the sort of man who cared about petty human concerns like dying.” 

Roy doesn’t respond to that. “Tell me this: how exactly did you intend to make good on that promise?” 

Conelly raises his eyebrows. “I thought it was obvious. I was planning to turn them in to philosopher’s stones.” 

Roy pales. “That’s why you hired so many.” 

Conelly inclines his head, as if to say ‘well, obviously’. “I _did_ need them to create a body for me, but after that...” He looks at Roy, incredulous. “Don’t look so horrified, Mustang. I was just planning to use all available resources. Some might call that an alchemist’s imperative.” 

“Some might also call it murder,” Roy’s voice has darkened. 

Conelly shrugs mildly. “You should know this by now, Mustang: there are no such things as ethics when you come to science.” 

Roy shakes his head in disgust. “We’re done.” 

“I wasn’t lying about Creta, you know,” Conelly says. He meets Roy’s eyes, his own gaze sharp and deadly. “You should watch your back, Mustang.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Roy says, turning his back on Conelly. He’s not scared. 

He scans the room, looking for Ed. It’s strange to have a hard time picking him out of a crowd; whatever else he might be, Edward Elric is not one to blend in. It’s on his third sweep of the room that he finally spots Ed’s trademark golden braid just through the doorway back into the tunnel on the stairs. 

“Go away,” Ed says, staring off into the darkness as Roy approaches. His tone is uncharacteristically cold. 

“I was just going to check that you weren’t hurt,” Roy explains, stopping a few feet behind Ed. 

“Yeah, well,” Ed says, still not turning around. “That’s not really your problem anymore, is it?” 

Roy’s brow wrinkles in confusion. “Do you just expect me to stop caring about your well-being now that I have no vested political interest in keeping you alive and well?” 

“You haven’t seemed so interested these past few years.” 

Roy exhales sharply. “I know that’s not what this is about.” 

“Yeah?” Ed says. “Then why don’t you tell me what it is about, since you seem to care so much.” 

Roy sighs. “You feel like the death of that... person was your fault because you let Conelly get away last time. You’re feeling guilty and useless and weak and you don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Incredible.” Ed’s voice is acerbic. “Thanks for enlightening me, General. I hadn’t realized I didn’t want to talk.” 

“You don’t deserve this, Ed. You said as much to me. Mistakes happen. The only thing you can do is stop them from happening again.” 

“I didn’t,” Ed says listlessly. “I let someone die again when I could have saved them.” His shoulders tense. “Do you remember Shou Tucker?” 

Roy looks away in shame. He had been the ones to send the Elrics there. He had been the one to get them involved. “Yes.” 

“And you remember what happened to his daughter, Nina?” 

“Yes.” Roy’s voice is so quiet as to almost be inaudible. 

“We couldn’t save her.” Ed clenches his hands. “We couldn’t save her, but I thought— maybe, the next time someone got hurt like that in front of us— maybe I could help. Instead, I made their damn transmutation circle work and that person was forced into a body and killed because of me.” 

“I’m sorry, Ed.” Roy wants to say more, but he doesn’t know what. 

“Fat lot of good that does them.” 

“I know. I— Look, Ed, you did what you could. You couldn’t have known—” 

“Couldn’t have known _what_ , exactly?” Ed asks sharply. “That messing around with human transmutation is a bad idea?” 

“You were doing what you thought best. I’m sorry, Ed, but—” 

“But nothing,” Ed interrupts angrily. “You don’t get to be sorry. You wanted to kill them from the start.” 

“I didn’t want to,” Roy protests. “But it— they— had a right to choose their own end. It was a kindness to let them die.” 

“Great,” Ed says, tone so far beyond cutting that there isn’t a word for it. “Excuses from the mass murderer. What’s next, saying that the Ishvalans you slaughtered _wanted_ to die?” 

Roy has heard enough insults from Ed to know when it’s genuine. Ed means this one. It may have been coming from a place of guilt and rage, but Ed meant every word. 

He doesn’t respond—he doesn’t know how. He knows what he did— he knows there’s no way to make up for it, no way to ever atone. He can’t undo what he’s done. In the end, underneath it all, he’s still the same person who heard the orders to burn innocents to death and followed them. He’s not worthy of forgiveness, but he’d thought that maybe Ed believed he was at least worthy of being cared about. 

Roy forces down the strange, tight, feeling in his chest. So much for making plans to stay with Ed. Whatever reasons Ed had had for helping Roy that night— whatever reasons he had had for kissing him— they’re gone, buried underneath the realization that Roy Mustang doesn’t deserve to be cared about, and certainly not by someone as brave and wonderful as Edward Elric. 

“I’ll leave you alone, then,” he says, trying to keep his tone neutral. Despite his best efforts, it cracks a bit at the end. “I hope you feel better.” 

“What did he say?” Al asks as Roy walks by. 

“He didn’t want to talk,” Roy replies, avoiding Alphonse’s gaze. “Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did. I’m going to call the MPs in. 

“General—” Al’s voice is earnest. “Whatever he said— he didn’t mean it.” 

“No,” Roy says, not able to turn around and face him. “I’m pretty sure he did.”


	3. Chapter 3

Roy calls his team from the front desk. It’s a little insulting how unsurprised they sound when they learn that he’s just been involved in capturing thirty odd alchemists all guilty of attempting transmutation; he’s not usually this reckless. Then again, it’s nice not having to explain himself, especially when he asks Breda to start looking in to dissident Cretan factions and Havoc to send down as many officers as he possibly can, along with a train for transporting armed and dangerous alchemists. Not that the alchemists they have trapped are particularly dangerous, but he doesn’t want to give them the chance to show off. 

Roy briefly goes back down to the basement to let Al and Mei know what’s happening. It’ll be at least seven or eight hours before the forces from Central get in. It’s going to be a long night, and he isn’t willing to trust any of the local police with guarding this many alchemists. 

Al and Mei take it well. Al was half expecting it— is used to the process of cleaning of messes left by idiots overstepping their bounds. Mei is fine too; she’s seen what philosopher’s stones and human transmutation can do, and she doesn’t want them to get away with it. Besides, she’s perfectly willing to stay, provided she gets to doze off on Al’s lap for a few hours, then have Al doze off on hers. They’re pretty cute as a couple, Roy notes, considering how absolutely terrifying they are. If he wasn’t surrounded by evidence of their abilities, he might start to believe that they’re just a couple of kids. 

Roy passes through the door into the tunnel. Ed has moved, he notes. He isn’t ashamed to say that he’s relieved. Roy Mustang isn’t a coward, but he’s not a masochist either. He doesn’t want to see the cold fury he heard in Edward’s voice reflected on the man’s face. There’s a limit to how much he can take. 

He heads to one end of the tunnel, using the slate tablet to seal off the entryway from the outside. It’s hard to ignore the Ed in his head that is complaining about messy alchemy and building things from the base parts. When he pulls his hands away, there’s not a transmutation mark to be seen, and the damn hole in his chest that fucking _Edward Elric_ should not have been able to make is aching. 

He seals the other two entrances as well, bringing down a good part of Steffen’s house down along with the third one. It never hurts to be too careful, and he’s had a really, really bad day. He could do with blowing off some steam. 

Mei is sat cross-legged in front of the double doors when he gets back, Alphonse (and Ed) nowhere to be seen. 

“Alphonse went to go get some coffee and food,” Mei explains. “Xiao Mei and I are keeping an eye on things. 

Something nudges at his foot, and Roy notices Xiao Mei, standing at attention. 

“Thank you,” Roy says, cracking the first genuine smile in what feels like an eternity. “Especially you, Xiao Mei.” He nods to the tiny panda at his foot. 

Xiao Mei pretends to find his thanks meaningless, doing an excellent job of turning her tiny, adorable, nose up at him. The second she thinks he’s not looking, she starts preening, though, and runs around in a few small circles, gnashing her teeth to show how tough she is. 

“Edward is keeping watch outside,” Mei says once she realizes that Roy isn’t going to ask. 

“Right,” Roy says with a sigh. 

“Al is talking to him,” Mei adds hopefully. 

“Right,” Roy repeats. Then, because Mei is a sweetheart and he would feel bad ignoring her, “I’m sure he’ll do a much better job than I did.” 

“He’s a jerk,” Mei says. “Edward— not my Alphonse.” 

“I know,” Roy says. It’s true, but it doesn’t make him feel any better. Trust Roy to get this upset at being rejected by a man he’s only spent the last four days with. 

_‘Don’t trivialize the relationship,’_ the Riza in his mind says. _‘You’ve trusted him for years, known him for longer. You already cared about him, and now he’s rejected you not just as a lover but as a friend. It’s no wonder you’re devastated.’_

 _I am not devastated,_ Roy thinks determinedly. 

The imaginary Riza just raises an eyebrow in response. 

Sometimes, he really hates his brain. 

“You can sleep,” Mei offers, noticing the tired look in Roy’s eyes. “I’ve got this covered.” 

“Are you sure?” Roy asks. Normally, he’d be loath to leave this many criminals in the hands of a nineteen-year-old. Normally, he doesn’t meet nineteen-year-olds who are veritable geniuses in both alkahestry and martial arts. If Mei Chang says she has something covered, he’ll believe her. 

“Yes, sir!” She gives him a tiny, adorable, salute. 

Roy feels himself cracking a small smile again. “Alphonse is lucky to have you.” 

Mei turns bright red and starts stuttering, and Roy goes to find a couch he can lie down on for a few hours. 

It’s Riza who wakes him up, tapping him gently on the shoulder to keep him from accidentally pulling a gun on her in a sleepy, terrified, haze. Not that he’d ever manage to shoot her if he did. The first and only time it had happened, she had torn the gun from his hand, stomped on his fingers, and put his arm in a very painful hold until he’d been awake enough to beg for mercy. 

“What is it, Major?” He says, blinking the sleep from his eyes. 

“I searched Conelly’s hotel room and found several clues as to who his benefactor might be.” 

Roy sits straight up. “Report.” 

“I found several checks in his luggage. I’m not sure, but I believe them to be of Cretan origin. Not only that, but the tags on several of his clothes were Cretan. It was a brand that we don’t import, sir.” 

_Son of a bitch_ , Roy thinks. Conelly had been telling the truth. 

“At the very least, sir,” Hawkeye finishes. “He has spent a considerable amount of time in Creta with some very rich accomplices.” 

“Thank you,” Roy says. “Call Breda with the update immediately. I’ve asked him to investigate.” 

Riza turns to leave. 

“Major?” 

“Yes?” She turns back around. 

“You didn’t find any more philosopher’s stones.” 

“No, sir.” 

Roy lets out a sigh of relief. That, at least, is good news. “Dismissed.” 

Riza nods and leaves. 

Roy checks the clock: six thirty. He slept for five hours straight. If Havoc did his job right, which happens about 95% of the time, the forces from Central should be there within the next hour or so, and Roy will be able to head back to his desk and pretend that the last week never happened. The thought should be comforting; he likes his job— likes the challenge of politics and the knowledge that he’s finally doing something right— despite the dull paperwork and duller cohorts, but all of a sudden the prospect of going back to Central and returning to the forced politeness and insincere comments on his alchemical abilities sounds... disappointing. 

He sighs. He’s being ridiculous. 

When he gets down to the basement, Al is sitting cross-legged with Mei in his lap and Xiao Mei slumped across his head. 

“Hello,” he whispers to Roy, trying to avoid waking the pair of sleeping figures. 

“It should only be another hour or so,” Roy says quietly. 

Al starts to nod, remembering the tiny panda on his head just in time. “Alright,” he says instead. 

“Thank you for this,” Roy says. 

“It’s not exactly my pleasure, General,” Al responds, “but it’s no problem helping. I’m the one who got you into this mess to begin with.” 

Roy blinks. He had almost forgotten that it had been Al who had sent Ed to him. 

“Out of curiosity,” Roy asks, even though it doesn’t matter any more, “why tell him to ask me?” 

There’s a dangerous smirk creeping over Al’s face, the one that means nothing but trouble from the Elrics, as Roy has learned through bitter experience. “Major Hawkeye said you needed something to occupy yourself with. Brother can be... occupying.” 

Roy raises an eyebrow. “And what do you mean by that?” 

“You’ll have to ask him yourself.” Al’s smirk is truly terrifying. 

Roy grimaces and turns away. “I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.” 

“Why?” Al asks. “What did he say?” 

Roy doesn’t answer. 

Al sucks in air through his teeth. “That bad, huh.” 

Roy nods sharply. 

“I’ll tell him to apologize,” Al says, and he sounds _angry_. 

The sound of Al’s voice laced with anger and frustration is so surprising to Roy that he turns back around. It’s a strange day when Alphonse Elric starts to lose his temper. 

“That’s not necessary,” Roy says. “What’s done is done.” 

Al narrows his eyes. “Maybe for you, but if my brother thinks that he’s going to get of this this easily, he’s got another thing coming.” The anger fades almost instantaneously from his face as he meets Roy’s eyes. “I’m sorry you had to hear whatever you did.” 

Roy shrugs, forcing himself to act casual. “It was nothing I haven’t heard before. Besides, it was true.” 

Al pauses. “I know what I’m about to say will sound like I’m making excuses for him, but please believe me. Just because he said something doesn’t mean that that’s the entirety of his opinion. Brother has a habit of ignoring all the good parts of people when he’s angry. Even if what he said was true on one level, I promise you he was ignoring all the other parts of you that he genuinely respects.” 

“Right,” Roy says. On the off-chance that Al is correct— that somehow Ed likes and respects the other parts of Roy enough to decide that the slaughter he helped commit doesn’t automatically justify all-consuming hatred— there’s no way Ed would ever admit it. Not that it should matter, because Ed is just some punk who helped overthrow a corrupt government and save hundreds of thousands of people when he was just a teenager, but it does, because Ed is some punk who helped overthrow a corrupt government and save hundreds of thousands of people when he was just a teenager, and isn’t that really the problem here? Because when Ed was just a kid, he had gotten orders from the military and disobeyed them to do the right thing, despite the overwhelming risk to his personal safety and the lives of the people he loved. Roy had gotten orders from the military that he knew were wrong, and he could have stopped right then and saved people, but he followed the orders anyways. Edward Elric is so good— so much better than Roy— that it hurts, and he’s completely justified in believing that Roy isn’t redeemable. 

“Just promise me you’ll listen to him when he apologizes,” Al asks. 

Whatever Roy had started, Ed had finished. For good. Edward Elric doesn’t apologize— at least not to Roy Mustang— and he most certainly doesn’t apologize when he still believes what he said. 

Xiao Mei yawns on top of Al’s head. 

“I’ll keep from bothering you and Xiao Mei any longer,” Roy says, and leaves. 

Riza is sat behind the front desk when he returns, cleaning her rifle. 

“I thought it might be good to have someone other than Edward here to explain why we’ve commandeered the building,” she says by way of explanation. 

She always thinks of the things he doesn’t. God, he loves Riza. 

“General,” she says, giving him an amused look, “you’re staring.” 

Roy blinks. “Sorry, Major.” 

From the way she shakes her head fondly, it’s clear she knows what he was thinking. 

“Havoc called in from Thatchpoole,” she says. “He managed to get fifteen officers on short notice.” 

Roy is impressed. “That many?” 

“Apparently, a few of them wanted to see what was so important that General Mustang himself needed to come.” 

Roy snorts. “I hope they’re ready for disappointment.” 

“If it makes you feel better, sir,” Riza says, “Havoc convinced the others to come by offering them an extra week’s leave.” 

Roy groans. He’s going to be untangling that problem for weeks. “This is why I never let him do administrative work.” 

Riza’s lips twitch. “I’ll try not to tell him you said that.” 

“Many thanks for your discretion, Major,” Roy replies, collapsing into the chair next to hers. 

“Of course, General,” Riza replies smoothly. “Happy to help.” 

It’s another forty-five minutes before they see Havoc approaching. He’s in half uniform, because of course he is, and he’s followed by a little over a dozen people, half of whom look exhausted and annoyed, and the other half of whom also look exhausted and annoyed, but nervous as well. 

Riza slots the last piece of her rifle back into place just as Havoc walks through the door. Roy is willing to bet she timed it that way, because Havoc immediately jumps to attention at the telltale sound. 

“Major!” He says, saluting Riza. Then he notices Roy. “Hey, General.” 

Roy stands up, surprised and a little impressed that Havoc wasn’t even making an effort to be formal. If this is what happens when he’s away for one week, he never wants to find out what happens when he’s away for two. 

“Captain Havoc,” he says drily. “Given the circumstances, I’m going to ignore everything about your conduct, but please try to remember that I’m your superior.” 

“Sure thing, chief,” Havoc says, because he’s a bit of a bastard. Roy will never say it out loud, but he’s incredibly glad he hired him, and not just because it gives Hawkeye someone else to terrify. Havoc is fucking hilarious. 

“Right,” Roy says drily. He turns to the group of hapless minor officers and MPs. “Below us are thirty-five alchemists guilty of breaking the ethics code in the second degree. All should be treated with caution. Below us are also two highly trained alchemists who helped us pull off this operation. They’ll be observing us as we transport the alchemists, and, in the event that one of the perpetrators manages to get free, please allow either them, the major, the captain, or myself to handle it. Their leader is guilty of breaking the Alchemical Ethics Code in the first degree. Do not attempt to handle him. I will handle him myself. Understood?” 

“Yes, sir!” The group, barring Havoc, snaps to attention. Thank god someone still respects his authority. 

“What about Edward?” Riza asks quietly. 

Roy grimaces. “It’s not like he can do much if any one of them gets free.” 

He can feel Riza glaring judgmentally at his back. “You know that’s not true, sir.” 

“Fine,” Roy says. “Would you please retrieve him, then?” 

“Yes, sir.” Riza slips away. 

“There will also be another person helping us,” Roy says to the group before him. “Stay out of his way, and he’ll stay out of yours. If he gives you an order, follow it. It may just save your life.” 

“Yes, sir!” The group repeats, and Havoc gives him a funny look. 

Roy deliberately ignores him, and starts leading the group to the basement. 

Thankfully, Al and Mei are awake when he gets down there. He wouldn’t have known how to explain that the two “highly trained alchemists” to which he referred were not only barely more teenagers, but confident enough in their abilities to leave only one of them on watch. 

“Keep an eye on these people,” he says to them, nodding to the group of military personnel. “Release the alchemists for them one at a time.” 

Mei and Al nod, and Xiao Mei shows her teeth. 

Roy himself steps to the side, guarding Conelly. He doesn’t know what the bastard has dreamed up during the night and he doesn’t want to find out. Conelly is far too dangerous to be given any leeway. Roy has never seen him at work, but he’s willing to bet Conelly has a transmutation circle tattooed somewhere on his body, just begging to be activated. He has no intention of finding out firsthand what it does. 

“Roy Mustang,” Conelly says mildly. “What have you got cooked up for me?” 

“A good deal less than you deserve,” Roy replies, not even bothering to look at him. 

Ed comes down into the room, then, right behind Hawkeye. There’s a split second where his and Roy’s eyes meet, and Ed’s eyes go wide. Then Ed looks away and pulls out the knife from inside his boot and starts playing with it aimlessly, the way Hawkeye likes to clean her guns in front of people. It’s a power move, meant to scare the alchemists and make sure Roy knows that Ed doesn’t want to talk to him— doesn't even want to look at him. It works. 

Roy glances down at Conelly again, surprised he hasn’t said something yet. Conelly looks worryingly contemplative and Roy resists the urge to swear. Conelly’s thinking about something, which is dangerous because he refuses to let Conelly get away. What he had done with the philosopher’s stone was nothing short of brilliant and deeply cruel and should never be allowed to happen again, not to mention Roy needs him to make a point to Creta. 

“You seem irritated, General,” Conelly remarks. “Trouble in paradise?” 

“You’ve clearly never been in politics,” Roy says, “if that’s what you’re calling my life.” 

“That’s not what I meant.” Conelly’s face is placid; that doesn’t bode well. He looks towards Ed meaningfully. “Shame,” Conelly says. “It’s a match made in heaven, really. The boy who gave up everything and his exploitative superior.” 

“I expected you’d be more tactful than that,” Roy replies. “It was a rather clumsy attempt to, what? Undermine my faith in my own ability to make judgment calls?” 

“You don’t deny it.” Conelly pauses. “I wonder that you’re not more worried about the rumors. Someone could make use of that.” He trails off suggestively. 

Roy raises an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. “First gambling, then threats? No wonder Bradley hired you. You’re completely incompetent— exactly his type.” 

Conelly shrugs, but says nothing else. 

Roy should be comforted. Conelly sounded helpless and tactless— hardly someone he should be worried about. There’s some sixth sense warning him that he should watch out, though— warning him that Conelly was just playing with him— that he isn’t done yet. 

While he’s been talking to Conelly, Al and Mei have helped clear out the room, each of them going with a group of ten alchemists and four or five of the group Havoc brought down. 

Roy raises a hand to get Hawkeye’s attention, nodding at Conelly so she’ll guard him. Then he goes to help get the rest of the alchemists in chains. 

He starts reforming the limestone that Mei and Al had used to imprison the alchemists, trying very hard to ignore the fact that he can see Ed from the corner of his eye. The transmutation is smooth; he levels out the floor with each one, returning it to its original state with no evidence of a transmutation. It takes a bit longer than it would have otherwise, but the looks he gets from the remaining alchemists make it worth it. He’s a damn good alchemist, even if he is a bit flashy. 

Havoc takes the last group, promising to get the mayor of Lydfax from the back of Ed’s hideout, and then it’s just him, Riza, Conelly, and Ed left. 

With Conelly he takes far more care than he did with the rest. He doesn’t want to see what Conelly will do if his hands get close enough together to make a transmutation circle on either palm. 

First, he twists the stone holding Conelly until he’s forced him in to a kneeling position, hands behind his back, but spread far enough apart that they can’t touch. Roy takes the handcuffs Riza gives him and slips them on to Conelly’s wrists. Then, with a clap, he alchemizes the chain between them in to a straight, heavy rod. 

When he looks up, Ed is staring at him. He very determinedly looks away and tries to ignore the look of wonder and desire that had been on Ed’s face. Any alchemist would be impressed, he reasons. It’s one thing to transmute something in to something else, but what Roy had done was completely different. He’d extended the timing of the transmutation circle (using Pearce, of all people, so take that Edward), which had made the rock mutable under his hands, allowing him to force Conelly to move with it. It’s not like he’d come up with the array on the spot— he’d spent many sleepless nights over several weeks to come up with it— after all, there’s only so much an encyclopedic knowledge of alchemy and a trip to the gate can do. But it is a good array, and even with an incredibly good array, it’s difficult to extend that much control over an alchemic reaction for that amount of time, even if the ‘reaction’ in process is just the rearranging of atoms. So, yeah, of course Edward was impressed. Who wouldn’t be? 

He lets out a breath and stands up. “Let’s get him back to Central,” he says to Riza, pulling Conelly up by his left elbow. 

She nods and pulls out a gun. Conelly, wisely, allows Roy to drag him out of the room. 

As they walk out of the building, Roy sees a group of civilians that has gathered to watch. He doesn’t know most of them, but he recognizes a few faces. Doris, in particular, looks shocked that Laurent-the-charming-flirt is involved in something like this. 

He shrugs, then winks at her because he can’t help himself. Sometimes it’s just fun to confuse people beyond all belief. Unfortunately, the second he turns around, his little flash of cheer dissipates. His was not a group made for laughter. 

The walk from Lydfax to Thatchpoole is a tense one. He’s dragging Conelly along, Riza is trying to stay in a spot where she can shoot Conelly without shooting Roy if Conelly does anything suspicious, and Edward is trailing behind, glaring daggers at Conelly in a distinctly un-Elric-like fashion. The Elrics tend to extend mercy to whomever they can. Edward just looks like he wants to rip out Conelly’s spine vertebra by vertebra before watching Conelly bleed to death in a pool of his own blood. 

It’s a relief when they see Havoc waiting for them, all the other alchemists loaded into the train. 

“Took ya a while,” Havoc says once they’re within earshot. 

Roy shrugs, feeling some of the weight that’s been on his shoulders for the last twenty-four hours lift. “You can transport the dangerous one next time, Havoc. I’m sure they’ll welcome a chance to get a swipe in at you.” 

Havoc snorts. “You wouldn’t risk that. I’m too useful.” 

“For shooting, yes,” Roy agrees. “For anything else... jury’s still out, as it has been for years.” 

Havoc shakes his head fondly. “Let’s just get him in the train. You look like you need coffee and sleep.” 

Riza opens the door to the compartment for Conelly and Mei steps out with Al, Xiao Mei on her shoulder. It’s quiet, and Roy is finally relaxing with the knowledge that he’s just within reach of a good night’s sleep. Then everything goes wrong. 

Roy turns to see a smiling Conelly. Then it registers that Conelly’s smile is genuine, and Roy knows that whatever is about to happen, it’s going to be very bad for him. 

There’s not time to move— not even time to push Conelly a little farther away— all Roy can do is watch in comically slow motion as Conelly’s eyes narrow and temples bulge. 

And then Ed is screaming his name and Roy feels someone push him out of the way, and then the world explodes into dust. 

Roy blinks his eyes open a moment later to a very dirty and scraped up Ed shaking him. 

“Roy?” Ed’s eyes are wide, a tremor in his voice. “Roy?” 

Roy coughs. “What...” He looks around to realize that they’re surrounded by dust swirling around in the air. 

“Conelly had a transmutation circle on his hand.” The tremor in Ed’s voice increases, “And I didn’t see it until he was activating it and I don’t know how he made it because we saw his palms but then I saw the blood dripping on his hand and he was closing it and he was going to kill you and I almost didn’t get there and I’m so sorry are you— are you—” Ed reaches out with one trembling hand. 

“You were worried about me,” Roy realizes, a feeling of relief not entirely related to his narrow escape sweeping through him. 

Ed’s brow draws together in confusion and he looks like he’s about to punch Roy until he remembers that Roy might not be in a punchable state right now. “What do you mean? Of _course_ I was worried about you.” 

“Oh,” Roy says faintly, partially because he has inhaled a lot of dust, and partially because he’s genuinely surprised. 

“Is this because of what I said, because,” Ed looks away in shame. “I didn’t mean it and I’m sorry I genuinely—I was just mad, okay, and I took it out on you and I knew that was a sure hit and it was awful but that’s not who I think you are, but if you don’t want anymore—” He swallows. “That is, I’ll understand.” 

Roy blinks, registering everything he’s just heard. “You apologized.” 

“I— yeah— wait, are you concussed?” Ed reaches towards Roy’s forehead. 

“No,” Roy says, batting away Ed’s hand. “Just confused.” 

“About the array he used? Because I didn’t get a good look at it and I doubt there’s enough of his hand left to check. I mean, my best guess is that it’s a variant on Emile’s—” 

Roy blinks. “No. I mean, yes, I’d like to know because that was nasty and I might not be so lucky next time, but that’s not what I meant.” 

“Then what?” Ed says with an expression so confused and innocent that Roy almost wants to laugh. 

“Ed,” Roy says simply. “I thought you hated me.” 

“Why would I—” 

“You have plenty of excellent reasons to hate me,” Roy interrupts. “Starting with the mass murder and the recruiting you for the military when you were a kid.” He pauses. “I know what you sound like when you mean something, and, Ed, you meant it.” 

“I didn’t— I hated myself,” Ed explains. 

Roy gives him a skeptical look. 

“I don’t— look,” Ed rakes his fingers through his hair. “I know what you did. I hate it. I don’t understand how you could have done it—how you could have listened when they said— But,” Ed says. “isn’t that a good thing— that I can’t understand how the you I know now would do that? Because it means you’re not the same person.” He exhales, frustrated. “Just because I hate what you did doesn’t mean I hate _you_. You’re a stubborn bastard who pretends to be a lot less kind and good than you actually are, okay? I think you’re kind of incredible, actually. And I get if you don’t—” 

But Ed’s words are cut off by Roy grabbing his neck and cupping his face and pulling him down to kiss him, and then Ed is kissing him back like he doesn’t need air and Roy does absolutely need air but he can’t even bring himself to be bothered. They’re both dusty and a little injured and Ed’s lips are really dry and Roy is pretty sure there’s dirt in his mouth but it doesn’t matter at all because he’s alive and Edward Elric is incredible and doesn’t hate him and actually thinks that he’s kind of incredible too. 

In the corners of his consciousness— the parts that aren’t completely overtaken by Ed— he’s aware that the dust is clearing and he can see a few figures. Someone who has to be Havoc, because it’s _Havoc_ , wolf-whistles. Roy refuses to take both of his hands off of Ed to clap, even if it’s just for a second, so his right one drops off of Ed’s neck and draws a transmutation circle in the dirt next to him and activates it. 

Havoc goes flying a few feet back. He won’t be hurt, Roy knows, but he’ll have learned his lesson for at least the next few minutes. 

Ed breaks apart from him, crowing with laughter, then he’s kissing Roy again like his life depends on it and Roy’s hands are tangled in his hair and it’s wonderful and he doesn’t even care that he’s lying in the middle of a rail yard with two of his subordinates and Ed’s brother watching. 

That is, he doesn’t care until he hears Riza’s trademark warning cough, which means he has about three seconds to make himself presentable before she starts making him do all his own paperwork instead of just forging half the signatures for him. 

Ed pulls apart from him at the same time; apparently, he also remembers Hawkeye’s cough and what exactly follows when she is ignored. He looks down briefly at Roy’s transmutation circle in the dirt. 

“Nice,” he says, “but next time, put the the ancient symbol for air in the third quadrant and add a stabilizing triangle in the middle. It’ll let you cushion his fall enough that you can send him a few extra meters without hurting him too badly and won’t take as much focus off of you kissing me. 

Riza sends Ed a very serious glare and he hauls himself off of Roy, grinning. Riza’s glare works a little better on Roy, who shivers as he gets up and realizes that she’s going to abandon him to dealing with giving people extra vacation days by himself. 

At Riza’s feet is Conelly, trapped in half a foot of dirt with his arm missing. Mei has clearly stopped the bleeding, because the wound looks weeks old instead of minutes, but Xiao Mei seems to be doing her best to gnaw off his other arm at the shoulder. 

“Done, sir?” Riza asks. 

Roy grins. “I think I am, Major. Let’s get back to Central.” 

Al claps, and Conelly shoots out of the dirt, hand encased in stone. Xiao Mei, who has bitten him and is holding on for dear life, squeaks as Al drags him off, probably planning to use some of the train’s inner walls to encase him in metal. Mei goes with him, possibly to help, possibly to convince Xiao Mei not to chew Conelly’s arm off. Honestly, Roy doesn’t think it would matter if Xiao Mei succeeded, but he may have a bit of a vendetta at this point. 

Havoc goes off to ask the conductor to start, and he, Ed, Riza find a car with actual seats. Riza, because she’s the most incredible woman on earth, takes one look at him and Ed, decides she’ll let them talk, and leaves to find a place to sit that isn’t near them. 

They sit down and Ed rests his head against Roy’s shoulder. “So, what do we do now?” He asks with a small smile. 

“Now?” Roy answers, “We head back to Central, dump the people in a military jail until they can stand trial in civilian court, and I take a hot shower and then sleep for at least thirty-six hours straight.” Roy pauses, then adds, “You’ll probably have to show up to all their trials.” 

“Whatever.” Ed shrugs. “I figure I’ll be stopping by Central a lot more now, anyways. Besides,” his expression darkens, “I need to make sure that Conelly gets what’s coming to him.” 

Roy wraps an arm around Ed’s waist, pulling him closer. 

“That’s not what I meant, though,” Edward says. 

“What?” Roy blinks, because he’s not exactly alert after the past few days. 

“I meant,” Ed says, “what do we do now?” 

“Oh,” understanding dawns on Roy’s face. “Come home with me.” He pauses, embarrassed. “What I mean is: you’re welcome to—” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Ed says. “I get it. You’re polite.” He rolls his eyes. “I’ll come home with you. It’ll give Al and Mei some space, at least.” 

“Good,” Roy says, a sense of calm satisfaction washing over him. “I’m going to fall asleep on you now, okay?” 

“Fine with me,” Ed says, yawning. “I could use the rest, too.” 

Roy makes a vague sound of affirmation, resting his head on top of Ed’s. His neck will probably have a crick in it when he wakes up, he thinks, and that’s the last coherent thought he has for a while. 

His aunt’s bar is lit with the warm glow of lamps, their light pooling on the waxed floors. There’s loud chatter coming from around the room, despite the fact that it’s just his team, the Elrics, and Mei Chang (and Xiao Mei, of course). It’s nice. 

He hasn’t been able to visit like this in a while; he doesn’t like to advertise that he’s related to the Madam, but since she’s gone into semi-retirement and Vanessa took over and opened a second location— the _real_ location— a few neighborhoods away, he’s been bringing people more often. He likes the free drinks and his aunt likes the company. 

“You got off easy, Roy-boy.” His aunt slides the day’s newspaper across the bar counter. “It’s not like you to be this sloppy.” 

The main headline is about the capture of the alchemists in Lydfax and the controversy surrounding their impending civilian— not military— trials. Roy will never get over how badly Bradley fucked over the country when he managed to convince everyone that the military should be judge, jury, and executioner. 

Below the headline is another article entitled _MUSTANG’S NEW BEAU_. Roy sighs. _Here we go,_ he thinks. 

‘One week ago,’ the article reads, ‘General Roy Mustang helped capture 36 criminal alchemists alongside a former subordinate named Edward Elric. Military officers at the scene of the capture reported seeing Elric and Mustang kissing and embracing passionately. Though Elric is now 23, he was recruited by Mustang when he was eleven. Though this is the first indication of any potential romantic or sexual relations, the nature of his and Mustang’s relationship while he was still a teenager and under Mustang’s command is in question. 

Lieutenant Havoc, who has worked under Mustang for eleven years and was with him during Elric’s military tenure, claims that their romance is a new development. “No one who worked with them would ever have thought it would turn out this way,” Havoc said. “He and Ed were at each other’s throats all the time. Back then, Ed was just an angry kid and the general was trying to keep him in line.” When asked for comment, Riza Hawkeye, who has worked under Mustang for over twelve years, said, “I have no doubt that this relationship is a new one. Edward and General Mustang never spent much time together when Edward was a child. I documented Edward’s missions myself. There would have been no time for him to meet with the general outside the allotted briefing sessions, of which I attended most.” 

Edward Elric was not available for comment.’ 

Roy puts the paper down. “’Got off easy’ seems a bit optimistic, Madam. Rumors need some time to develop.” 

Chris fixes him with a stare. “Don’t patronize me. I’ve been at this longer than you’ve been alive.” She huffs, pouring herself a drink. 

Roy reaches for the bottle of vodka she’s just put down and she slaps his hand away. 

“Don’t steal my liquor.” 

Roy groans. “I need a drink.” 

She frowns at him. “Not until you explain to me how you thought this would work out.” 

“Hey, Chris,” Ed slides onto the seat next to his. “Why does Roy look like someone stole his favorite suit jacket?” 

Chris snorts. She loves Ed— of course she does. He’s lively and clever and beautiful and not afraid of a good fight. If he had a little more discretion and a little less notoriety, she probably would have tried to hire him on the spot. As it is, she’s just been giving him free drinks all evening and grilling him for useful information about Aerugo and Creta, of which he has plenty. 

“He’s trying to come up with a good enough explanation for his actions to convince me to let him drink.” She pulls a bottle of Aerugonean whiskey and a tumbler out from under the counter and pushes them to Ed. 

Ed pours himself a drink and raises his glass to her in thanks. “I wouldn’t worry too much. Roy and I are going to have a big fight soon and Hawkeye can stay the night at his house. That should get people to forget about me pretty quick.” 

Chris raises an eyebrow at Roy. 

“This is the first I’m hearing of it,” Roy mutters. Then, because Ed’s idea is a solid one and he really wants a drink. “I’d be happy to go along with it, though.” 

Ed smirks. “You’re getting lazy.” 

Roy rolls his eyes. “Maybe I’m just delegating more effectively. Can I please have a drink now, Madam?” 

“Fine.” Chris puts the vodka away. “One beer.” 

Roy groans again and Ed pats him on the shoulder, getting up. “Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll forgive you for your indiscretion sometime in the next ten years.” 

“I never should have kissed you,” Roy complains. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.” 

Ed, predictably, takes that as a compliment. 

“I like that boy,” Chris says, watching him walk away. “He’s good for you.” 

“I like him too,” Roy admits. 

“Don’t do anything foolish and ruin this for yourself,” she warns. 

Roy snorts. “I wasn’t planning on it.” 

“Hm,” she acknowledges, leaving him to sit in peace. 

Riza wanders over after that, if ‘wandering’ can be used to describe the way Riza walks. If anything, it’s more a of a casual-yet-deliberate stroll. When she does something, she means to do it. Riza Hawkeye is not the sort of person to wander. 

“Sir,” she says, sliding into the seat that Ed had been occupying and looking amused at the baleful looks Roy is giving his drink. 

“Major Hawkeye,” he acknowledges, and ignores her amusement, both because he loves her and because this is not a battle he can win. 

“I see the Madam approves of Edward.” She throws him a sly, sidelong, glance. “I suppose I’ll have to be the one to interrogate you at gunpoint now.” 

Roy snorts. “Don’t get your hopes up. There’s still a good chance that she pulls a gun on me and tells me that she’ll shoot me if I do anything to Ed.” 

Riza bites back a smile. “I’ll get my chance someday.” 

“Perhaps, Major.” Roy looks over at her fondly. “Though for my sake, I hope not.” 

Riza is doing that strange thing with her eyes where she seems to be laughing at him and telling him she loves him at the same time. God, he’s so lucky to have her 

“Joking aside, sir.” Riza’s tone gains a dangerous edge. “I wanted to talk to you about Edward.” 

“Wait,” Roy narrows his eyes, taking in her squared shoulders and terrifying expression. “Is this a shovel talk?” 

Riza sighs. 

“Shouldn’t you be giving this talk to Ed?” Roy asks, amusement coloring his tone. 

“All due respect, sir,” Riza says, a bit of the exasperation she’s trying to keep hidden making its way into her voice, “but this is not a talk Edward needs. He has already realized where he might go wrong. You, on the other hand, need a reminder.” 

“Of what, Major?” Roy’s tone is more curious than defensive, but only because he trusts Riza to be right. 

She meets his eyes, gaze steely and unyielding. “Of your tendency to keep secrets. And,” she holds up a hand, cutting him off, “don’t bother protesting. You know it’s true.” 

“I don’t see how this relates to Edward,” Roy says, even though he does. 

Riza looks unimpressed. “You trust him,” she says. “At least, you trust him subconsciously. However, I worry that your habits might not allow you to do the same consciously.” Her eyes are trained on his. “Don’t make that mistake.” 

“I won’t,” Roy says. He means it. 

“Good,” Riza replies. “He’s an asset to you— personally, if not professionally. Use him. You need more people who have the ability to care for you openly.” 

Roy smiles a small, melancholic, smile at Riza. “I’m already happy with what I have.” 

“I know, sir,” Riza’s is soft, “but that doesn’t mean that you should limit yourself to it. Let us each give you what the other can’t.” 

Roy nods. “Understood, Major.” 

Riza gives him a rare smile— that’s her second this month, he notes, which probably means that he’s doing something right. 

“Thank you,” he says quietly. 

Riza shakes her head gently. “You don’t need to thank me.” 

“I know,” Roy says, “but thank you.” 

Her eyes do that strange thing again, and she looks him up and down one last time before deciding that she’s okay with what she sees. 

“You should go talk to Breda,” she says. “He had new intel on Conelly.” 

Roy nods and gets up. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Major.” 

“See you tomorrow, sir,” she replies. 

He gives her one last smile before going to find Breda. 

“So,” Breda is saying, “it looks like Conelly was working with an insurgent Cretan faction— one of the old great houses that wasn’t wiped out during their rebellion.” 

On the other side of the bar, Havoc tries to move Xiao Mei off his head and gets bitten. Both Breda and Roy look over for a second as Ed roars with laughter and Fuery freaks out. Breda smirks and Roy lets the little half-smile that means he’s incredibly amused but not willing to show it slip onto his face. 

“That explains the money,” Roy says, returning to their conversation. “But why funnel it into a random Amestrian town? They have carbon sources of their own.” 

“Apparently,” Breda replies, “the plan was for Conelly to create the first legion of immortal soldiers in that town, using the souls of the alchemists he had recruited. Then, while the military was distracted by that, he would sneak into Central and use the souls of the townspeople as fuel for the second legion. While the forces from Central were scattered and preoccupied, the Cretan faction would take West City and launch an assault on Central from there. Problem is,” Breda smirks again, “the forces the Cretan faction had assembled have been getting real antsy about getting caught. A few had quit before you got Conelly, but after the news made it back that he had been captured, the rest of it fell apart.” 

“What about the leaders?” Roy asks. 

“Being tried for treason as we speak.” Breda frowns. “Or what passes for a trial when you’re so rich you control a tenth of the country’s exports.” 

“Hm.” Roy frowns. “Should we be expecting any more attempts from them?” 

“Not any time soon. They’ve been scattered, and the ruling faction is going to keep a much closer eye on them from now on.” 

Roy leans back, letting out a small sigh of relief. “At least that. I have enough on my plate already.” 

Breda snorts, casting an intentionally conspicuous glance at Ed. “You sure do, General.” 

Roy resists the urge to groan. He’s avoided most of Havoc and Breda’s comments so far. He does not want to start hearing them now. “I’m going to get another drink.” 

Roy is sitting at the bar again, about halfway through his second beer— fuck, he wants some real alcohol— when Al slides into the seat next to him. 

“Hello, General.” His words sound normal, but he has a look in his eye that could freeze molten tungsten. 

“Hello, Alphonse,” Roy responds, wondering what exactly he’s gotten himself into by not immediately running for the door. “Can I help you?” 

“No.” Alphonse smiles at him. It’s terrifying. “I’m just here to talk to you about my brother.” 

Roy raises his eyebrows. This should be good. 

“Brother is an idiot,” Al starts (already a strong beginning in Roy’s mind), “but he is also my brother and I love him. Please don’t hurt him.” Al’s ‘please’ sounds more like a threat than almost anything Roy’s heard in his life. “I don’t want to have to get involved if you do.” 

Roy deals with terrifying people hiding their intentions behind smiles all the time. This is different. Al is smiling not to hide any of his intentions, but because he is an absolutely lovely person who adores his brother and just so happens to be one of the most dangerous people in Amestris and he wants to make sure that Roy knows that. 

“Understood,” Roy says, resisting the urge to avert his eyes. It’s a power thing, and he refuses to be beat by someone unerringly mild and polite, even if that person is an Elric. 

“Oh, good,” Al says, tone lightening. “That makes me feel a lot better.” He smiles again, this time without borderline murderous intent behind it. “By the way, have you gotten around to asking Brother why he broke into your apartment?” 

“No,” Roy says. Between catching up on work, keeping an eye on the Creta situation, and managing the transfer of the alchemists between military and civilian jurisdiction, Roy hasn’t even seen Ed except for the few times he had barged into his office and told him to eat some food and get some rest before he collapsed. He’d honestly forgotten. 

Al smiles wickedly. “Time for you to ask.” He looks up and shouts. “Hey! Brother!” 

Ed saunters over from where he’s been playing darts with Mei, who is using her kunai to fix the dartboard every time she hits it. 

“Yeah, Al?” Ed suddenly notices the expression on his brother’s face and pales. “What is it?” 

“The general was just wondering why you decided to ask him, specifically, to join you.” 

Ed narrows his eyes. “And why would he be asking that?” 

“Because,” Roy supplies, already encouraged by the nervous look on Ed’s face, “Alphonse told me that he had heard that I needed something to do, and said that you, specifically, would be able to remedy.” He pauses. “I believe he said you could be... occupying.” 

“What the fuck, Al?” Ed flushes. 

Al laughs. “If you won’t explain, I will.” 

Roy looks between the two of them, wondering if he’s figured it out correctly. The Elric brothers are secretive, but they’re not that secretive. 

Ed groans. “What Al is trying to say is that he was trying to get me off his back, so he sent me to your place in the hopes that we would spend all our time fucking on every piece of furniture you own and spare him the trouble of either worrying about me doing something stupid while in the field, or making me take a hotel room on the other side of the city.” 

Al huffs. “ _Brother_ , that’s so crude.” 

“Oh right,” Ed says, “I forgot. You were expecting us to fall in love before the fucking.” 

Al narrows his eyes. “That is _not_ what I meant.” 

Roy bites back a smile. “And why were you certain that Ed would want that?” He asks Al. 

Al pauses, watching Ed stare daggers at him in the same way that one might watch a four-year-old who is threatening to run away if you make them take a nap. 

‘Don’t. You. Dare,” Ed mouths. 

“Oh.” Al smiles mildly. “That’s because he’s had a giant crush on you for years.” 

“Motherfucker,” Ed swears, and Roy can’t tell if it’s meant to be a promise that he’ll get Al back for what he said later or just an insult. Knowing Ed, it’s probably both. 

Roy bites back a smirk and turns to Ed. “It’s true, then?” 

“Absolutely,” Al affirms before Ed can get a word in edgewise. “That’s why he followed you back here one time.” 

“Hey!” Ed protests. “I was curious about his information network. I wasn’t just spying.” 

“Yes,” Al acknowledges, “but the only reason you managed to figure out that they weren’t real dates is because you were paying ridiculously close attention to him.” 

Ed buries his face in his hands. “You’re terrible.” 

Al smirks. “Maybe next time you’ll think twice about commenting on Mei and I.” He gets up. “Don’t worry, brother,” he says. “It looks like General Mustang is flattered.” 

“That’s worse,” Ed moans. “It’ll go straight to his ego.” 

Al walks off, a spring in his step. 

“Fuck,” Ed swears. “I need to get him back for this.” 

It takes all Roy has not to crack a smile. “So,” he says, “when exactly were you planning on telling me that you were horribly in love with me?” 

Ed pulls his head out of his protective arm-cave just enough to glare at Roy. “I am not in love with you.” He groans. “The horrible part might apply though.” 

“You’re getting what you signed up for,” Roy says without a trace of guilt. “Also, you’re avoiding the question.” 

“Ugh,” Ed complains. “Also, never. You’re fucking insufferable enough without the ego boost. Besides,” he sits up, looking more thoughtful, “I didn’t think you’d be interested.” 

“I wasn’t,” Roy admits, “but up until a little over a week ago, I was still imagining you as fifteen.” 

Ed snorts. “Fair. Maybe I should have tried to seduce you earlier, then. It wouldn’t have been hard. It took me, what? All of two days?” 

“Technically,” Roy says. “You still haven’t actually seduced me.” 

The rest of the bar seems to dim as Ed’s golden eyes flick up to meet Roy’s. 

“Oh yeah?” Ed’s voice is quiet. “I can fix that.” 

It takes Roy all of half a second to agree. “Let’s go,” he decides, standing up. “Now.” 

The mystique of Ed’s beauty breaks slightly when he snorts, saying, “You _are_ easy. Don’t try and deny it.” 

Roy gives him a sidelong look. “Are you coming, or not?” 

Ed swallows. “Coming. Definitely coming.” 

Neither of them bother to say goodbye to anyone on the way out. 

Roy lost his shoes in the living room, his jacket in the hallway, and now Ed is pulling off Roy’s thin gloves and shoving Roy’s bare hands in his hair. 

“Touch me,” Ed orders, kissing Roy, and Roy has neither the willpower nor the desire to say no. 

He keeps one hand entangled Ed’s glorious hair, pressing the heel of it against the back of Ed’s neck so he can feel Ed’s warmth. The other drops down to Ed’s waist and slides underneath his shirt. Ed shivers under his touch as he slides his hand up his shirt farther than he’s ever been able to before, and then Roy feels the sheath of a knife against his hand and almost laughs. 

“Really?” Roy is stuck somewhere in the middle of amused, scared, and oddly aroused. 

Ed huffs. “I told you I always carried them.” 

Roy snorts. “Yes, but I rather assumed that that was an exaggeration, since I’ve seen multiple people search you in the interim and come up with nothing.” 

Ed smiles, showing his teeth. “Winry made them for me. If she doesn’t want something to be found, then it won’t be.” He pulls out from Roy’s grasp so he can unbuckle it, tossing it to the floor and sliding right back in between Roy’s arms. 

“Any others?” Roy asks wryly. 

“About three,” Ed responds, kissing him, “but you can figure out where those ones are later.” 

Roy smirks against Ed’s mouth. “Oh?” 

“Oh, fuck off,” Ed responds, loosening Roy’s tie with one hand so he doesn’t have to move his other one. “I should have figured that you’d be even worse like this.” 

Roy tries to craft a suitably devastating comeback, but Ed’s hand has just slipped down to his inner thigh and it’s taking almost everything Ry has to avoid grabbing it and putting it where he really wants it. 

“What?” Ed says, completely aware of what he’s doing and utterly unrepentant. “No witty retort? You’re losing your edge.” 

The annoyance-cum-desire on Roy’s face must be making way to a strange sort of fondness, because Ed looks away very quickly and mutters something about him being “an overemotional idiot”. Roy smirks, knowing that Ed is turning pink. Yeah, he’s not losing his edge. 

“Are you finished acting like a blushing virgin?” Roy taunts, finally managing to ignore how devastatingly close Ed’s hand is in favor of pissing the other man off. “Or are you going to kiss me again?” 

Ed scowls at him, beautiful and more than a little irate. “What, you want a demonstration of my skills? Fucking perv.” 

“I’m not the one sleeping with me,” Roy says, because he knows how to get under Ed’s skin and now the reward for being a bit of a dick isn’t just an incredibly amusing argument but the chance that Ed will kiss him again— or more— just to shut him up. 

“You are a complete and utter bastard,” Ed says. “I can’t believe I’m in to you.” 

“So, you don’t have a thing for older men?” 

Ed flips them so that he’s pinning Roy to the bed, knees on either side of Roy’s waist, one hand on his right shoulder, the other on his left wrist. 

“Only _old_ men, apparently.” Ed smirks. “I bet you even have trouble getting it up.” 

Roy smirks and cants his hips, enjoying the way Ed’s hips twitch when faced with proof that Roy has absolutely no problems in that department. 

Then Ed’s face goes slack with pleasure and it’s one of the most beautiful things Roy had ever seen. 

“Fuck,” Ed whispers, the word slipping out of his mouth like a benediction. 

Roy reaches up with his unpinned hand to cup Ed’s face gently, a reflex response to the rush of adoration he’d felt. Ed leans into the touch, taking his hand off Roy’s shoulder and taking Roy’s hand. Still looking at Roy, he presses a kiss to the back of his hand. He turns it over gently and presses one to the palm as well. His mouth skims its way down to his wrist, to Roy’s pulse point. Ed’s lips settle there and he kisses it. This time, though, there’s the light scrape of teeth, and Roy gasps. 

Suddenly, Ed is scrabbling a Roy’s clothes, determined to get them off him as quickly as possible. His fingers are far from gentle, undoing the buttons of Roy’s shirt with frantic speed. Roy makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a low, wanting, groan, and then his shirt is open and Ed is undoing his pants while Roy throws the shirt to the floor and then he’s fully naked and Ed is on top of him, beautiful and golden and Roy _wants_. 

“You should take your clothes off too,” Roy suggests, voice rough. “Please,” he adds, because his aunt taught him to be polite and he’s feeling just desperate enough to beg. 

Ed laughs and divests himself of his clothes (and knives, judging by the three thunks of heavy objects against the floor) quickly and then he’s back on top of Roy, still smiling, and his hands are on Roy too, roaming over the scars on Roy’s chest, one by one, until he reaches the one from Lust. It’s none too pretty, even though it’s been years. It had been a serious stab wound, and the burns he’d had to inflict had left him with puckered flesh across the entire left side of his abdomen. 

“You’re incredible,” Ed says, completely serious. 

And Ed hadn’t been there— must have heard the story through Al and Hawkeye. Ed hadn’t seen Roy scream as he cauterized the wound, hadn’t seen him limp down the corridor, terrified that Riza wouldn’t be alive when he found her, hadn’t seen him cut off the part of his brain that was terrified and in pain and begging him to just give up and pass out so that he could focus solely on the array and destroying the philosopher’s stone inside Lust. 

“Maybe the way Al tells it,” Roy says with a tired smile. 

Ed shakes his head. “I’m not talking about you killing her, dumbass. You forced yourself to stay alive just so you could protect other people. That’s a pretty damn good bar for incredible.” 

Roy smiles gently. “You’re not so bad yourself, punching god in the face as a teenager and all. I just wish I could have seen it.” 

“Alright,” Ed looks away from Roy, turning pink again. “I’m already in your bed; you don’t have to keep trying to get into my pants.” 

Roy snorts. “Believe me, if I were still trying to get into your pants, you would be hearing a very different sort of praise right now. Just shut up and take the damned compliment.” 

“You don’t want me to shut up,” Ed says with perfect confidence. “You’re in to me talking.” 

“Sometimes,” Roy admits. “But right now, I really just want for you to get to fucking me.” 

“Yeah,” Ed swallows hard, going a bit starry-eyed, “I think I can do that.” 

“Lube and condoms are in the right bedside table,” Roy supplies when it’s clear that Ed isn’t going to move without prompting. 

“Right,” Ed responds, shaking his head to clear it. 

Roy turns over. He’d like to be able to watch Ed fuck him, but the truth is he was never that flexible to begin with, and he’s gotten worse over the years. This position, at least, won’t leave too many reminders in the morning. 

He lets out an involuntary gasp at the first touch of Ed’s cool fingers at his entrance. It’s not a novel feeling— he’s had a few lovers fuck him over the years, and more recently, when he’s had the time and energy, he’s opened himself up, slow and torturous, and fucked himself on the glass dildo he keeps for special occasions— but it’s a feeling that never gets old. 

Ed slips one finger inside, carefully, and waits for Roy to adjust. Right now, he really wishes he could see Ed’s face. Ed is completely quiet aside from his soft breathing, and Roy can imagine how he looks: calm and focused, chewing on his bottom lip the way he does when he’s completely absorbed in whatever he working on. 

“More,” Roy mutters once the burn has faded. “Hurry up.” 

Ed snorts, but does as he says, coating a second finger in lube and slipping it inside. 

“More,” Roy orders the second he thinks he can take it. His dick hasn’t flagged throughout the entire process, and it’s getting impatient. 

Ed makes vague sound of acknowledgement, but instead of adding a third, he starts to fuck Roy slowly with his fingers. 

“What the hell, Ed—” Roy starts, but before he can finish the complaint, Ed hits his prostate and he makes a choked sound. 

Ed lets out a noise halfway between a laugh and a moan. “Easy.” 

Roy gasps as Ed hits his prostate yet again. “How on earth—” he stutters, “do you know how to do this?” 

He can hear Ed’s smirk in his voice. “What, Al didn’t tell you? After Winry and I broke up, I went through a prolonged slutty phase.” 

Roy lets out a huff of amusement, coupled by another gasp. “And when exactly did this— fuck— phase end?” 

Ed pretends to consider, not stopping the slow movement of his fingers for a second. “Right about now, when I figured out that having sex with you is incredibly entertaining.” 

“Because of my age?” Roy manages, only half kidding. 

“No,” Ed says, sounding surprisingly honest. “I mean, the power trip of being able to reduce my old CO to a quivering mess—” 

“—not a mess,” Roy protests. 

“Not yet.” 

“Is that—” Roy makes yet another choked sound, “a challenge?” He can feel Ed rolling his eyes. 

“Not one you can win.” Ed sounds worryingly confident. “Anyways, I just meant that you’re more interesting than almost everyone I’ve had sex with.” 

“Interesting how?” Roy asks, because he’s curious and this is giving him something to focus on besides the teasing almost-enough-but-not-quite feeling of Ed’s fingers inside him. 

“You annoy me,” Ed says, “and it’s frustratingly hot. Besides, you can talk about alchemy with me and not get completely lost within the first thirty seconds.” 

“Yeah?” Roy smirks, though the effect of his smugness is somewhat ruined by the fact that he nearly moans the second after. “Do you want me to recite the periodic table to you?” 

“You suck,” Ed says flippantly, punctuating the point with a particularly devastating thrust of his fingers. 

“And you are never going to get around to actually fucking me at this rate.” Roy is impressed he got the whole thing out. 

Ed snorts, stopping. “Aren’t I the one who’s supposed to be impatient?” 

“You’re not the one who’s had someone torturing them for several minutes.” 

Ed sounds like he really, really, doesn’t care. “If you say so.” 

“Ed...” Roy warns. 

“Fine, fine.” Ed draws his fingers out for the final time and coats the third one in lube. “I’m hurrying.” 

“Thank—” but before Roy can finish, Ed’s fingers are back inside him and he’s moaning for real this time, thrusting himself back in the vague hopes that there’s more he can take. He loves the stretch— the feeling of Ed’s fingers inside him— and he wants more. 

Fuck,” Ed whispers. “I— fuck.” 

“Yes,” Roy says, “that’s what you should be doing to me.” Then he moans, because Ed has found his prostate yet again and it’s absolutely incredible. “I can take it,” he gasps. “Just please, Ed, for the love of god, fuck me.” 

“Alright,” Ed says, sounding wrecked. 

He pulls his fingers out to grab a condom and Roy almost fucking whines at the sudden emptiness. He can hear Ed rushing to rip open the packet behind him, but it’s not fast enough, and usually he’s a patient person, but right now he just wants Ed’s dick in him and he wants it _now_. 

Then, finally, mercifully, Ed is rolling the condom on and pressing into him, and it’s almost more than he can handle, but he likes the edge between pleasure and pain— likes being pushed to his limits— and so he shudders and takes it, reveling in the fullness. 

Soon, too soon, and not soon enough, Ed is fully seated and Roy can feel him trembling with the effort of keeping still. 

“Go,” Roy chokes out. “You can move.” 

“Are you sure?” Ed asks, though he doesn’t sound like he can hold out much longer either way. 

“Yes.” Roy knows how wrecked he sounds. “ _Please._ ” 

Then Ed starts moving and Roy whimpers and it’s too much in the best way. 

Ed sets a steady rhythm, something Roy would be impressed by, given Ed’s former desperation, if he were in any state to be doing anything but grasping at the headboard and the sheets below him. Ed puts both his hands on Roy’s hips, helping steady Roy against his thrusts. Then, as Roy gives him more and more leeway, Ed pulls Roy’s body back to meet his hips, over and over, until their bodies are moving in perfect tandem. 

Then Ed hits the exact right spot, and Roy is in heaven. Whatever conscious thought he has left dissipates as Ed thrusts into him at the perfect angle over, and over, and over. Roy can hear himself moaning, can hear Ed’s whispered “Fuck”, but his brain doesn’t register any of it. The only things he cares about are Ed’s hands on his hips and the feeling of Ed drilling into him until he can’t feel anymore. 

“Can you come like this?” Ed mutters, hips beginning to stutter. 

Roy manages to choke out something close to a yes, and then Ed is redoubling his rhythm, hands clenching Roy’s hips tight enough to leave bruises, and it’s relentless and incredible and Roy couldn’t stop it if he wanted to. 

And it’s a few more seconds, and then Roy is coming, spilling across his own stomach and his comforter with a wordless shout. Ed must feel Roy tighten around him, must see the way Roy’s hand clenches at the sheet, because then he’s letting go too, burying himself deep inside Roy as he reaches his peak, nails clenching hard enough to leave red half-moons in Roy’s skin. 

Roy slumps, Ed collapsing on top of him. They’re both breathing hard, though less from exertion than excitement. 

“Off,” Roy mumbles once he can form coherent words. He shoves at Ed. “’M not your chair.” 

Ed rolls onto his back with nary a retort. 

Roy allows himself to fall down on the comforter for all of two seconds before he realizes that he’s just covered both his stomach and chest in his come. He groans, knowing he’s going to have to force himself to strip the comforter off the bed and go shower. He could just grab a wet towel and roll to the side where there isn’t any mess, but he’d feel disgusting once he woke up in the morning. 

Ed turns his head just enough to see Roy get up. “Where are you going?” 

“To shower.” Roy is happy to see that he can still manage ‘dry amusement’ despite the exhaustion coloring his voice. “You’re welcome to join me.” 

Ed is apparently too exhausted to respond. 

Roy shrugs, figuring that he can always push Ed off the bed later if he refuses to move. 

The water is hot, enough that the glass fogs up and Roy doesn’t notice Ed entering the bathroom and throwing the condom away. Ed opens the shower door and steps inside without a word, Roy handing him a bar of soap. 

They shower like that— in silence. It’s nice, Roy thinks. He hasn’t had someone stay the night with him in a very long while, barring the times he brings the Madam’s girls home and makes up the spare bedroom for them. Only once they’ve both stepped out of the shower and Roy has balled up the offending comforter and dumped it in the laundry room to wash later do either of them speak. 

Ed’s been staying with him since he got back. He has clean clothes to sleep in, but he unerringly steals Roy’s clothes, forgoing a top because he’s noticed the effect that his shoulders and exposed collarbones have on Roy. Roy would be an idiot and a hypocrite if he were annoyed; an idiot because he’s getting to stare at Ed, a hypocrite because he remains shirtless for the same reason. 

“So,” Ed says, slipping under the sheets and curling up under an old quilt that he’d found in the hall closet. “I’ve been thinking.” 

Roy slips into bed next to him, turning on his side and resting his head on his hand so he can look at Ed. “You have to know how terrifying those words are coming from you.” 

A tired smirk touches the corners of Ed’s mouth as he turns his head to look at Roy. “You’re too worried.” 

“I am the exact right amount of worried,” Roy says, though there’s no real argument behind the words. 

“ _Anyways_ ,” Ed says, “as I was saying: I’ve been thinking that you should fuck me tomorrow.” 

“Getting optimistic about my capabilities and free time, aren’t we?” Roy remarks. “You know I have to leave at seven tomorrow, and,” he checks the clock, “it’s past midnight now.” 

Ed rolls his eyes. “I’m sure you’re up to the task, capability wise. And I’ll make you a deal.” 

Roy raises his eyebrows. 

“You can leave at seven,” Ed says, “and stay until whenever you’d like.” 

“I was already going to—” 

Ed cuts him off with a look. “ _But_ , the second the clock strikes eight, I’m coming to find you. You can stay at your office and I can kick everyone out before you bend me over your desk and fuck me into oblivion, or you can come home and fuck me into oblivion wherever you want.” 

Roy bites back a smile. “I think I can live with that.” 

“Good,” Ed says, “because you didn’t have a choice.” 

This time, Roy actually smiles. 

“Sentimental bastard,” Ed mutters, but he smiles back. “Now,” he says, turning over, “I’m going to sleep.” 

Roy smiles again and turns off the light. 

Then, in the quiet darkness, he listens to Ed’s soft breathing until he falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I was lying awake in bed a week and a half ago, thinking about fmab (as you do), and the "You'd make a decent prostitute" line from B99 found its way into my head. I started writing sixteen hours later, and here we are.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading! I haven't written anything this long in years, so if you have concrit, I'd love to hear it! If not, any comment always makes my day :D


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